Russian Troll Factory Paid US Activists To Fund Protests During Election (theguardian.com)

bestweasel writes: The Guardian reports on another story about Russian meddling, but interestingly, this one comes from a respected Russian news source, the RBC. From the report: "Russian trolls posing as Americans made payments to genuine activists in the U.S. to help fund protest movements on socially divisive issues. On Tuesday, the newspaper RBC published a major investigation into the work of a so-called Russian 'troll factory' since 2015, including during the period of the U.S. election campaign, disclosures that are likely to put further spotlight on alleged Russian meddling in the election. RBC said it had identified 118 accounts or groups in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that were linked to the troll factory, all of which had been blocked in August and September this year as part of the U.S. investigation into Russian electoral meddling. Perhaps the most alarming element of the article was the claim that employees of the troll factory had contacted about 100 real U.S.-based activists to help with the organization of protests and events. RBC claimed the activists were contacted by Facebook group administrators hiding their Russian origin and were offered financial help to pay for transport or printing costs. About $80,000 was spent during a two-year period, according to the report."

Comments

$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That's less than a 30 second TV advertisement for HOURS of news coverage.

Uranium Scandal, Comey and the FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the 2 big stories regarding Russia today, and explains a lot of what went down, and the concentrated effort (and we do know it was a Clinton campaign effort thanks to wikileaks) to link Trump to Russia during the campaign in order to take the heat off herself.

http://thehill.com/policy/nati...

http://www.newsweek.com/james-...

It's Comey and the Obama DOJ that needs to be investigated for obstruction of justice.

Re:Uranium Scandal, Comey and the FBI

[Billly Gates]

These are the 2 big stories regarding Russia today, and explains a lot of what went down, and the concentrated effort (and we do know it was a Clinton campaign effort thanks to wikileaks) to link Trump to Russia during the campaign in order to take the heat off herself.

http://thehill.com/policy/nati...

http://www.newsweek.com/james-...

It's Comey and the Obama DOJ that needs to be investigated for obstruction of justice.

No they need to investigate these guys named as DEVO for the suppressed secret information.

Re: Uranium Scandal, Comey and the FBI

[bestweasel]

Are we not bots?
We are Devo.

It reminds me of David Byrne's music a few years later with Talking Heads.

Re:Uranium Scandal, Comey and the FBI

[Bartles]

2.31 million actually, and 500K to Bill for a 45 minute speech.

Re:Uranium Scandal, Comey and the FBI

[HornWumpus]

It's still time. Sure it looks like payback, but to do otherwise is to let the whitewash stand.

They won't, because the DNC and RNC are in a MAD situation. Getting them to dump the dirt on each other is the best possible outcome. Trump being a loose cannon could make it happen. 'Establishment' on both sides are working to prevent it.

Re:Uranium Scandal, Comey and the FBI

[Kogun]

Well holy fucking shit, this needs serious upvoting.

"They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill."

and "In documents it released on Monday, the FBI confirmed that former FBI Director James Comey drafted a statement about the conclusion of the Hillary Clinton email investigation months before interviewing Clinton."

The key is not getting caught

[rsilvergun]

folks really hate phony protestors. What made all this work so well is that Russia didn't get caught during the election. If they had Hilary would probably be president, especially if we got it as an October surprise instead of Comey reopening the investigation just long enough to help throw the election Trump's way.

Not that Hilary is a spring chicken herself but it took a fundamental breakdown over just about everything to make a guy who used to be a Simpson's joke our actual president.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

May I point out that Hillary was also for Black Lives Matter and Blacktivist, the two groups being paid to protest?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[hackwrench]

It's confusing to me if this was helping Hillary by helping causes she supported or harming Hillary by making them more of a nuisance.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

BLM, like gay rights activists, and anti gun people make a lot of noise which inflames anger from the apathetic right more than increase support from the apathetic left.

Dems, at the federal level at least, generally don't support gays blacks or whatever just because they want their vote, but because they think humans should be treated humanely. They are quietish because the chance of gaining one more vote is not worth the creating tn for the other side.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Powercntrl]

...If they had Hilary would probably be president

Trump won because there are a lot of foolish Americans who bought up the line of shit Trump was selling. Bring back jobs (reanimate the corpse of the late Steve Jobs)! Build the wall (and pay for it by selling grappling hooks to Mexicans)! Make healthcare affordable (by kicking off the sick people, duh)! Lock up Hillary (???)! Abolish the EPA (How bad can that possibly be?)! MAGA (Buy a stupid red hat)!

Hillary never really managed to coalesce her voter base around anything quite as rousing. The best thing she had going for her was that she wasn't Trump. She needed a miracle, not some protesters staying home.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

>"Russia conspired to help Trump by donating a couple bucks to pro-Hillary activists"

Do these people listen to themselves?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[hackwrench]

Well it all depends if they sought out the activists whose idea of being active is to use violence.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh bullshit. Hilary's agenda was to sell the rest of our economy down the river, and a whole bunch of democrats voted for the only person who acknowledged their problems. The DNC has betrayed us.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[PopeRatzo]

May I point out that Hillary was also for Black Lives Matter and Blacktivist, the two groups being paid to protest?

Here's how it works. You pay someone to participate in a protest and then have them do something that's really ugly and angers people.

For example, one paid Russian protester, a guy named "Jack Posobiec", would go to leftist rallies and hold up "Rape Melania" signs. Now this guy is an alt-right supporter of Trump, but he's not recognizable, so people think, "Man, those leftists are really horrible. Look, there's a "Rape Melania" sign."

Then, it gets the front-page treatment on Infowars, Breitbart, DailyStormer, and eventually ends up on Fox News. Total outlay for the sign is maybe a buck. Trump gets elected, and get this: "Jack Posobiec" becomes a "journalist" with White House credentials. So, not only does he get a little money on the front-end, but he gets rewarded by Trump on the back-end. Oh, and Posobiec was also one of the leading "Pizzagate" conspiracy theorists, which we now know was also a Russian op.

Here are the details:

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.salon.com/2017/08/...

https://www.deathandtaxesmag.c...

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh. Found the poor schmuck who buys what the orange moron is selling.

Trump supporters are dumber than cattle.

How is it acceptable to refer to President Trump as the "orange moron" yet it was totally unacceptable to refer to President Obama's skin color as though it mattered, or had anything to do with anything?

If you want sanity in politics, the first step is to eliminate the double standards and completely shun any who propagate them. Then something resembling a concern for actual issues might emerge. It also might not, but here's the thing: we keep trying things that don't work. It's time to try something that might work. What's the definition of insanity again?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[poity]

But the article says they were facebook accounts that offered financial help to organize pro-BLM protests.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

"Russia didn't get caught during the election"
Obama knew Russia was trying to influence the vote in July of last year and did nothing. He said he didn't want to publically confront this topic because it might have effected the election. In the latter days of his term he confiscated two Russian properties and kicked 35 Russians out of the country. He should have taken these steps back in July of last year.

And everyone should ask a few simple questions. If Clinton won the election would there be any investigations into Russia's interference in the election? When Clinton lost there were lot of people calling for abolishing the electoral college system. If Clinton had won the election would this particular issue ever been mentioned?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it acceptable to refer to President Trump as the "orange moron" yet it was totally unacceptable to refer to President Obama's skin color as though it mattered, or had anything to do with anything?

How about because Obama's skin color was his natural skin color and he has little personal control over that? I suppose technically he could have had it bleached or he could have darkened somewhat through tanning, but it doesn't appear he did either of those (just some regular sun exposure). It's possible he may have used some makeup for appearances, which wouldn't be that uncommon or unusual, but he wasn't trying to fool anyone.

Trump's skin color, on the other hand... Well, he also has little control over his natural skin color, but he certainly tries. Clearly he wants to look tanned, so he uses self-tanner. And he does it really, really badly. Badly enough that, from someone as obsessed with image as he is, it looks like appallingly bad personal derangement. Much like his "hair" and his ridiculous ties. And those shoulder pads... I remember for a little while during the election I was trying to figure out why his arms always looked so strange, sort of sunken into his body, then I realized that it's because he's wearing shoulder pads that are way too big. I mean, I know almost nothing about clothes and fashion, and even I can see this. Trump has sold or currently sells his own lines of men's clothing, so you would think that he would either recognize this, or at least get fashion advice from someone who does. I could be missing something though, it could be part of an attempt to disguise his weight and funny looking arms are just a tradeoff.

If you look at pictures of Obama, he mostly just seems to wear suits that fit, wear normal ties, doesn't seem to do outrageous things with his hair or his skin etc. Obama generally seems like he's pulling it off pretty effortlessly, while Trump looks like he's trying too hard and simultaneously failing at it. To be fair, Obama has the advantage of relative youth over Trump and he's also not bald like Trump, so he doesn't have to try as hard. Also, with Obama's hair, he only has one option for how to cut his hair and still look "presidential" (i.e. not _too_ black, although it's not like the racists don't notice anyway).

Also, there's the wives. Both men have attractive wives (you might not know it from all the howling about how ugly she is from a certain portion of the population who pathologically can't find a black woman attractive, but she's quite attractive by most objective racially unbiased standards). Although I don't think that Obama thinks of his wife as an ornament, they look good together. It's always possible that they're just putting on a show as a happily married couple, but they've done an amazing job of faking if so. They complement each other. Meanwhile, Melania is obviously a trophy wife. She was a professional model/escort. Yes, definitely an escort despite what her lawsuit claimed, bearing in mind that while the term escort is often a euphemism for prostitute, it doesn't actually have to mean paid sex. The actual definition is basically a woman paid to be arm candy for men at events. Considering that she and Donald met at exactly such an event, introduced by her manager who was, in fact, in the business of hiring out models for parties, and who went into business with Trump providing models for events intended to sell real estate, it seems like the term is likely to fit. She's also blatantly obviously a trophy wife as a model, married to a rich man 25 years older than her, and with his history with women and his history of public statements about women. Anyway Trump has made the classic mistake of rich mean acquiring a trophy wife who think that it will make themselves look good. And that's forgetting that standing next to a much younger, much more attractive woman, who also knows how to dress impeccably and who is frankly constantly posing for the camera in public, just makes him look like more of a slob.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

So... You use pro-Hillary propaganda to smear Trump, anti-Trump violence to smear Trump, and pro-Trump activists to smear Trump.

You've invented a scenario in which you and your team are never responsible for any of the legitimately shitty things you have done. You're trying to dodge responsibility for your humiliating loss, your violent fascism, your support of hate groups like BLM, and your Clinton/Russian bribery collusion. You think that pointing and shrieking at Trump will distract us. It won't.

You are a sniveling coward, an intellectual weakling, and a traitor deserving execution.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

Show me where the source says one word about BLM!

Re: The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

No, but we DO have to investigate NRA's use of foreign funds in elections (a felony)

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

See? This is why rightards are such idiots
DAILYCALLER? VRWC echo chamber DAILYCALLER?
Now, try again, with a real source.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

Yes,let's dispense with hypocrisy
No more evangelicals for the thrice divorced pussy grabber.THEN we talk about hypocrisy.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[PopeRatzo]

But the article says they were facebook accounts that offered financial help to organize pro-BLM protests.

And I pointed out that the same techniques were used more widely, as in the case of Jack Posobiec.

Each one of these disinfo attacks by itself seems small, but you have to remember there were multi-front attacks. I think the full scope of this is going to be a lot more clear when the Special Prosecutor presents his evidence to the grand jury. We shouldn't have to wait long now that Mueller has questioned or subpoenaed White House officials who are only once-removed from the President.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

But Russians spent more on Clintons (both Bill and Hillary) than that. In fact, RF paid out 500k to Bill Clinton for just 1 speech. Hundreds of millions of dollars were donated to Clinton foundation by state-actor donors. 85% of that money was spent on Clinton family expenses rather than on charity. How is this someone not getting caught? There was nothing to catch. Clintons were openly bribed by foreign powers. Why would Russians spend millions on Clintons in the open only to go and then spend a few hundred thousand on Trump in secret? The whole Russian influence story doesn't make any sense if you consider all the publicly known information which you are asked to not consider as part of the story. Why are unproven accusations and innuendos (that Russia helped Trump) more important than what is known for a fact (that Russia helped Clinton)?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

Dems, at the federal level at least, generally don't support gays blacks or whatever just because they want their vote, but because they think humans should be treated humanely.

Yeah, right. Is that why Dems constantly try to dismantle charter schools? Because they are the best chance that blacks have to get quality education in the ghetto? No, it's because the contributions (aka "bribes") from public employee unions are more important than the humane treatment of blacks. Even Obama dismantled predominantly-black charter schools.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

What are you talking about? Nether Clinton is orange.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[mSparks43]

thats how it worked in 1930s germany. brownshirts running round pretending to be commies. smashing stuff.
Now, can we. please raise our vodkas to the Best US president ever.
Zazdarovje, comrades.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

That's because you (and the general public) doesn't seem to grok the Russian's actual goals here. It wasn't to get Trump elected specifically. The real goal is the destabilization of Western democracies. Not just the USA, but France, the UK, and other NATO powers. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Russia is involved in the recent Catalina independence push too. They are involved with the pushes for both California and Texas to succeed. We are in a "virtual war" being waged on Facebook, talk radio, Fox news, and various other media outlets...and only one "side" is even aware of it. Asymmetrical warfare at it's finest!

Re:The key is not getting caught

[bgalbrecht]

85% of the Clinton Foundation was spent on doing charity work, unlike the Trump Foundation, which was illegally paying Trump legal bills, among other things. The right wing media falsely told you idiots that because only 10%-15% of the Clinton Foundation money went to other charities, so the rest must have gone to the Clintons, and you believed it, instead of checking out the Clinton Foundations own tax filings, which showed that they were spending that money running charitable programs themselves instead of giving it to other charities to spend doing the charity work. You're too clueless or lazy to do the research, and besides, since you already hate the Clintons, they must be doing something sleazy with the money. I have news for you. The Trump Foundation is the sleazy one, it's actually had to pay fines for their misuse of Trump Foundation money, and quite a bit of their "donations to other charities" are just tee times at Trump golf courses, booked at full cost, regardless of how much the other charities actually raised with the donations.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Yep to first half. Nope to other, the other guy debunks it adequately (not political but commercial expense)

A couple trolls under the flag of 'All lives matter' were able to incite BLM to violence by merely showing up. This clearly showcased Hillary as supporting violent extremists; black supremacists who consider actual equality insufficient. It caused a lot of backlash - who the hell gets enraged by a slogan of "All lives matter"?

But for that to happen, the BLM protests had to be organized in the first place. No BLM protest = no BLM causing riot = not exposing BLM as black supremacists = not showing Hillary supports a racial supremacist group.

OTOH, maybe Hillary would be better off not supporting a racial supremacists group in the first place?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

That's because you (and the general public) doesn't seem to grok the Russian's actual goals here.

Really? So was this not a problem before the election? The full damage that the Clintons had done to the US interests was known. Why did the fact that it was Russians who participated in buying of Clintons only become a story after Clinton lost the election? I don't know how you come to the conclusion that only one side is aware of something. Both D's and R's are claiming Russian interference in the elections. Neither side is offering anything sinister which occurred in secret (buying ads and paying shills is not sinister -- it's politics-as-usual). The only things which can be claimed to have been sinister were done in the open. And, again, they were not brought up as anything important before the US electorate rejected the criminals who are now pushing this narrative.

The real goal is the destabilization of Western democracies.

Oh? My bad. I didn't realize there were millions of Russians who settle in the West and refused to assimilate in order to create their own society-within-a-society in order destabilize the host countries. Oh, wait. It wasn't the Russians who did that. It was the muslim immigrants. I wonder who has more money to buy influence in secret.... Russia, which emerged as a result of an economic collapse of the Soviet Union, or OPEC nations (awash in oil cash)? Well, I guess we'll never know.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

85% of the Clinton Foundation was spent on doing charity work

Well, either you are lying or most of the news sources are. I'll go ahead and assume it's you.

spending that money running charitable programs themselves

That is they spent that money on their family activities? Got it. Your evidence that I am wrong is to agree with me. Clintons were broke when BIll left office. And then he somehow magically had enough money to spend millions on his daughter's wedding. That's his personal money -- not government picking up his bills (as it did when he was President). I am sure a billion dollars in donations from state actors to a foundation which is doing charity in countries in which those states have no interest is producing no family income for Clintons. It's all above board. Tax filings.... Jesus H Christ! Tax filings! This is what you use to judge how Clintons spend their money abroad? Clinton family has been in money laundering business first and foremost ever since Bill left office. Everything else they did was subservient to that activity. And before you think I am some right-wing nut, you should know that I voted for Gore.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

There you go lying again. You really have to provide evidence which, at least, agrees with you when you push these lies. From the article you linked:

supporters point to a 2013 Stanford study that found that Michigan charter-school students are learning at a faster rate in reading and math than their public-school peers — seeing an additional two months of gains in each subject. Gains for Detroit charter-school students were greater, at three months.

The only downside it lists is in some mismanaged of expenses (as if Public schools had none of those) and the source for that is Detroit Free Press -- an unapologetically Communist (by their own admission) newspaper.

Care to list some other cherry-picked bull shit to show that the system which has consistently produced better education outcomes should somehow be denied to blacks? That's your evidence for "humane" treatment of blacks by the Democrats, right? I'd call you an idiot, but I don't want to be that generous. I doubt you don't get it. You just can't sell the truth, so you pander lies.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Almost. Currently, all they need is to shell out some pocket money to leaders of the commies to get the commies to smash stuff all on their own.

The Russians didn't *fake* anything for the elections. They just gave the opponents a small nudge to get them to reveal their true face.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Powercntrl]

Bullshit. She is a corrupt, lying, manipulative globalist.

Both candidates were pretty well hated. Perhaps pretty close to equally.

Thing is, as I said, Trump had a slick sales pitch for his candidacy. More jobs, less taxes, healthcare back to the way it was before Obama fucked with it, less people at your local Walmart speaking non-English languages, and a big push back towards "traditional" American values. I'm sure that resonated well with the younger, white, straight, male voters, who presumably imagined themselves driving off into the smog-filled sunset, in their brand new Ford F-150.

Of course, the real reasons the American Dream(TM) is out of reach for so many Americans is a myriad of complex economic factors, and really can't be solved with the stroke of a president's pen. But overly simplistic proposed solutions to complicated problems fit well in a tweet (and they also make good chants at political rallies e.g. "Build the wall!"), and when things don't actually work out, you can always blame it on obstruction by the opposing party.

Hillary's campaign didn't really hinge on her promising much to the American public beyond continuing the status quo. She had hoped voters would simply be so repulsed by Trump (and perhaps his positions on the issues), that they'd hold their nose and vote for her - or at the very, least stay home on election day if they were planning on voting Republican. Turned out not to be a winning strategy.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[bgalbrecht]

No, you've been listening to the right wing media, because the mainstream media hasn't been making these claims. Take a look at the Clinton Foundations tax filings, like I did, or factcheck.org did, and you'll see that your claim is bullshit. Yes, the Clintons made a boatload of money with speaking engagements, but they take no salary from the foundation, maybe just travel expenses. BTW, by your token, I'm no leftwind wingnut, I voted for Bush in 2000.

From Factcheck.org http://www.factcheck.org/2015/06/where-does-clinton-foundation-money-go/

Asked for some examples of the work it performs itself, the Clinton Foundation listed these:

• Clinton Development Initiative staff in Africa train rural farmers and help them get access to seeds, equipment and markets for their crops.

• Clinton Climate Initiative staff help governments in Africa and the Caribbean region with reforestation efforts, and in island nations to help develop renewable energy projects.

• Staff at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, an independent, affiliated entity, work in dozens of nations to lower the cost of HIV/AIDS medicine, scale up pediatric AIDS treatment and promote treatment of diarrhea through life-saving Zinc/ORS treatment.

• Clinton Health Matters staff work with local governments and businesses in the United States to develop wellness and physical activity plans.

To bolster its case, CARLY for America noted that the Clinton Foundation spent 12 percent of its revenue on travel and conferences and 20 percent of its revenue on salaries. That’s true. But the Form 990 specifically breaks out those travel, conference and salary expenses that are used for “program service expenses” versus those that are used for management or fundraising purposes.

For example, nearly 77 percent of the $8.4 million spent on travel in 2013 went toward program services; 3.4 percent went to “management and general expenses”; and about 20 percent went to fundraising.

As for conferences, nearly 98 percent of money spent was tabbed as a programming expense. And when it comes to salaries — which includes pension plan contributions, benefits and payroll taxes — about 73 percent went to program service expenses.

The point is that some foundations actually do the charitable activities themselves instead of paying other charities to do that work for them, and the Clinton Foundation is one of them. If you hadn't been listening to the right wing lies, you would have known that instead of propagating the lies. Is it a good, effective charity? I really don't know, but by repeating this nonsense, you're doing a disservice to the 2,000 CF foundation employees who are trying to make a difference.

I'm not a Hilary Clinton fan, and she was a crummy candidate who clearly has spent the last 17 years believing that she deserved to be President someday. If the Democratic party wants to win in 2018 and 2020, they need to start pointing out that trickle down economics has never worked, the upcoming "tax reform" is going to increase the deficit, make the rich richer, the companies will use their tax cuts for things like higher dividends and stock buybacks instead of investing in new equipment and better pay for employees who are not top executives like they did with the 2004 tax amnesty, and that Trump's cabinet is doing stupid things like making energy more expensive by pushing coal and nuclear energy, the EPA is allowing more pollution, the Interior Department is basically letting mining and logging go in to national monuments, forests to do things like strip mining, the Republicans voted to limit abortion, but couldn't pass a children's health insurance bill, the HUD secretary grew up getting HUD benefits but wants to dismantle the program. And when the Democrats make these points, they need to also explain how they're going to do a better job. If they can't do that, they'll lose again, because people like you are believing the lies the Republicans keep repeating.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

"So was this not a problem before the election?" I never said it wasn't. In fact, it most likely was! However, this phenomenon has only really surfaced recently. I don't know how you come to the conclusion that only one side is aware of something. The side I'm talking about isn't either the R's or D's. I'm saying the Russians are the only "side" that groks the fact that this is a multi-country, long-term campaign. Neither side is offering anything sinister which occurred in secret (buying ads and paying shills is not sinister -- it's politics-as-usual) Sinister: giving the impression that something harmful or evil is happening or will happen. Most people consider advocating the succession of California and Texas "harmful", debacles such as Pizzagate...if someone showing up with a gun and threatening people at a pizza parlor isn't "harmful" then you need a new dictionary. "Opra says some white people have to die" "Pope Francis forbids Catholics for voting for Hillary!" "Michelle was caught cheating with Eric Holder" "Bill Clinton loses it in interview - admits he's a murder" there are literally thousands of other examples if you just look, and this is only in the US in this election cycle at the Federal level.

And it's not just fake news. Over a dozen intrusions into various election-related systems, including several state-level systems. Just because the hacks didn't "change" the election doesn't mean it's OK...that's not the point. The point of all of this is to destroy the public's confidence in the entire system itself, in multiple countries. It happened in France too, they just set up a honeypot and caught it first. Ukrainian utility systems are constantly under attack. Russians are right now penetrating the US, Turkey, and Switzerland electrical grid but as of yet haven't actually interfered with power distribution. This isn't some "guy in his basement"; this is a highly coordinated state-level campaign.

The issue of non-assimilation has nothing to do with this issue, nice try at straw man. You should go work for Fox News! It IS a problem, I agree, but has little to do with Russia's "virtual war" except that bringing it up is another "fear trigger" that Russia is also using; they use it quite a bit on Muslim immigrants in Europe to generate chaos and fear between the "native population" and the recent immigrants.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Freischutz]

May I point out that Hillary was also for Black Lives Matter and Blacktivist, the two groups being paid to protest?

... and everything that the GOP, Trump and Bannon manage to screw up is actually clever sabotage funded by George Soros. Oh, and did you know that Soros is the leader of the Illuminati and a secret worshipper of Satan whose has been working in secret for decades to destroy Christian conservatism in the USA and replace it with Islam?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Freischutz]

So... You use pro-Hillary propaganda to smear Trump, anti-Trump violence to smear Trump, and pro-Trump activists to smear Trump.

You've invented a scenario in which you and your team are never responsible for any of the legitimately shitty things you have done. You're trying to dodge responsibility for your humiliating loss, your violent fascism, your support of hate groups like BLM, and your Clinton/Russian bribery collusion. You think that pointing and shrieking at Trump will distract us. It won't.

You are a sniveling coward, an intellectual weakling, and a traitor deserving execution.

You are an Anonymous Coward in real life too aren't you?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Gussington]

Hillary never really managed to coalesce her voter base around anything quite as rousing. The best thing she had going for her was that she wasn't Trump. She needed a miracle, not some protesters staying home.

She didn't need a miracle, she already had the popular vote so she just had to distribute her effort more evenly. She just needed to get out of her echo chamber to the swing states in the heartland. I find it astounding that she thought she could win the swing states without even showing up.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[sysrammer]

I think I remember this rant. Only back then it was bitching about Obama. And back further, it was bitching about Bush. The names change, but the technique is the same.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Jesus H Rolle]

Said the Tibetan troll. We all know who the real puppet masters are.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[goose-incarnated]

I'm sure that resonated well with the younger, white, straight, male voters,

I'm sure it did, but if it were only them, then Trump would not have won. He won because he had support from non-white and non-male voters.

You're trying to spin his win as something that is only possible because of racist and sexist voters by pointing out "white, male" only, when in fact millions of female and/or non-white people voted for him.

His win wasn't due to sexism, or racism. It was due to a sense of entitlement from the other candidate. People hate that shit. HRC was basically trying to slide in on the "if you don't vote for me you're sexist/racist" card, while Trump actually fucking worked to convince people to vote for him.

HRC worked less than Trump did at winning, and the results showed it.

If you want to convince voters to vote for you stop calling them racists when they aren't, and stop calling them sexists when they aren't. "Deplorables" didn't help either.

Throwing mud instead of working hard is what caused HRC to lose. Sure, Trump threw mud too, mostly inappropriately ... but then he also worked hard to convince people to vote for him. HRC just threw mud because she saw no reason to work for the position - all her life things have been handed to her on a fucking platter, so she was not used to not being simply given what she asks for.

Her 30 years of experience in politics resulted in her having less political and socially aware skills than someone who took it up as a hobby a year ago. She should have worked harder.

You gain no goodwill when you paint with a broad brush - while Trump did in fact attack people he kept it personal. He attacked specific individuals. HRC went ahead and called a good quarter of the country "deplorables." Trump then worked to convince groups to vote for him, while HRC did the opposite - "See all these individuals who support me".

That's a good summary of the election tactics on both sides: Trump attacked individual people and wooed broad groups. HRC attacked broad groups and wooed individuals.

Tip: If you find yourself negatively referring to a group as "white, male", then you're probably a moron who's bad at math. Like the math that led you to believe that insignificant numbers non-white and non-male voters voted for Trump - when the truth is that Trump could never have won without the female, black and hispanic voters.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[AmiMoJo]

black supremacists.... who the hell gets enraged by a slogan of "All lives matter"?

People who understand what it means.

"Black lives matter" is saying that there is a specific problem with black people's lives being valued less than others, e.g. the way some cops have reacted inappropriately with deadly force.

"All lives matter" was is a rebuttal, saying that there is no particularly bad problem with black people being treated differently, and that the cops who kill unarmed black people are justified in doing so. To oppose it does not suggest you don't think that all lives matter, or that you are a black supremacist, it just means you understand why people are saying it, i.e. to undermine BLM.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Maritz]

How is it acceptable to refer to President Trump as the "orange moron" yet it was totally unacceptable to refer to President Obama's skin color as though it mattered, or had anything to do with anything?

Trump wears fucking foundation/powder makeup. It looks fucking ridiculous. The fact that he does this should have made him fucking unelectable all by itself, ignoring all the psychotic moronic manchild shit.

I might be tempted to do that too, if I was as fucking grotesque as him, but I wouldn't expect to get elected into office despite it.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[sudon't]

Trump won because there are a lot of foolish Americans who bought up the line of shit Trump was selling.

Really, Trump was just able to take advantage of the atmosphere created by the right-wing media over many years. Trump was simply the first guy to put down the dog whistle and pick up a megaphone, thus taking the party away from the more squeamish Republicans. This is what Trump does - he makes money by slapping his name on other people’s work.

Because of the shameless right-wing media, we have a large portion of the electorate living in an alternate reality. Many years of Fox News and right-wing radio created it, and this is why they were primed for Trump’s ridiculous promises. The Russians love this, of course. Not only are Americans divided over nonsense issues the other half doesn’t even know about, (heard about the upcoming Anftifa coup?), they have a fool in the White House.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

Ok, I think you are missing the whole "she is above the law" part. Well, not missing, but lying about it like you are about everything else. And you do like to cherry pick your data. Your example of 8 million is less than 1% of the billion dollars the foundation collected. But you found 1 year in which Clintons were not paid anything directly by the foundation? That's kind of the nature of money laundering -- they always have to use different schemes for each new operation because repeating the same scheme make them catchable. Like Hillary's newest book... C'mon. best seller? No one would read that tripe. It's another laundry scheme.

Clinton Health Matters staff work with local governments and businesses in the United States to develop wellness and physical activity plans.

Jesus. Read this sentence 3 times and then think about whether anyone who is paying attention would actually believe this kind of bullshit. "Programming expenses"? What's the drill down? How much of it on private-jet fuel?

Trump's cabinet is doing stupid things like making energy more expensive by pushing coal and nuclear energy, the EPA is allowing more pollution

aha. It's why India has signed a deal to build 10 nuclear plants. Because it's looking to waste money. Nuclear has the cheapest per kW generation and coal has the cheapest booster per kW generation. "Renewables" only have cheapest generation during excess production times.

I voted for Bush in 2000.

You want me to take the word of a criminal-supporter such as yourself on your voting record? Pass. Although if you did vote for Bush, you might be in a better position to claim that you are just an idiot rather than an apologist for criminals. I just don't think you are that stupid.

if the Democratic party wants to win in...

Yeah, I hope they do exactly what you suggest. I won't give any hints on what they should do. I would rather see this vile scumbags dethroned and all the criminals among them jailed before they get to be heard again. There is a new path the country should take, but for now it is the Republicans who still have to act like they have something to prove. So it is the Republicans who are more years from becoming corrupt than the Democrats (who are already there).

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

Over a dozen intrusions into various election-related systems, including several state-level systems. Just because the hacks didn't "change" the election doesn't mean it's OK

No, something else makes it Ok. The fact that it never happened.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

The issue of non-assimilation has nothing to do with this issue, nice try at straw man.

It's not a straw man. The muslim minorities which refuse to allow assimilation are the main reason for destabilization of Western European societies. Trying to blame any of it on Russia is just a misdirection.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

People who understand what it means.

...or imagine so.

For the general populace, to violently oppose "All lives matter" exactly suggests you think not all lives matter (or not all matter equally). No matter what you think, or imagine that means means, the general public gets your message, conveyed through violence, as "Black lives matter, others don't."

The correct reaction from BLM would be reaching out and asking ALM to join them: "We're fighting for the same cause. Your message is compatible with ours. Join our protest." Accept, embrace, include. You protest more general cause, we protest a specific instance of it, but we're united in the same fight. Take the message at face value, and accept it at face value, and if the *actual* value doesn't match, then you have exposed the lie and the counter-protesters lose face. And if they choose to play along, hey, a message of peace, love, unity, equality reaches the nation, your movement only benefits. Play their game, because it set you up in a win-win scenario. Just pick the challenge.

But noooo. You know better. You always assume the worst. They MUST be Evil, and Evil deserves Fist to the Face.

You chose to pick one specific interpretation of "All lives matter", specifically assuming ill intent, putting in the mouth of ALM protesters words they didn't say, Then you assaulted them. And completely regardless of what they actually meant, and what you meant, everyone outside got your message as "Black lives matter, others don't."

The only people who chose to read this according to your interpretation from moment one are already Hillary's stalwart supporters and that doesn't mean shit. The undecided Joe Average saw this as a solid confirmation of their lingering suspicion of BLM being supremacists, and decided "Trump is a better choice."

We can go back and forth about ethics of what happened, make, support or debunk our assumptions who thought or meant what, who had the actual moral high ground - and it won't matter shit. What matters is how it looked like - and to everyone "in the middle"/"undecided" it looked exactly like in my prior post. It was a horrible PR move that likely cost Hillary the victory, and put BLM under scrutiny about racist tendencies. The tiny moral victory of several bruises on the trolls' faces, at cost of losing the whole war - losing the elections.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

Come to Stockholm, and ride the subway 4-5 stops, any line. You're almost certain to hear Russian being spoken. Here in my suburb we have a block known as "Little Moscow" because nearly all the people living there are Russian.

That's not refusing to assimilate. New York is a motley of ethnic neighborhoods. Most people of 3rd generation or so still know where their grandparents came from. But they are all assimilated. They are all American in every way. They all speak English and they are more likely to be familiar with English-language writers than with writers of countries from which their grandparents came from. If they follow any sports, it's more likely that they follow American sports. It's not any one detail that defines a culture. It's the totality of them. The fact that they can have some flair of their ancestors' culture in their lives is not a failure to assimilate.

And speaking of Helsinki--lots and lots of Russians there, too, as well as in Espoo and Turku.

The fact that they speak Russian to each other doesn't mean as much as the fact that they can speak your native language to you. Helsinki is really not a fair example, btw. Google maps shows that it's about 2 hours by car from St Petersburg (E18 ?). That's closer to St Petersburg than most cities in Russia.

So... You were saying...?

That the communities which uproot local cultures are invasive. Muslims (in Europe) do that. Russians seem to adapt to local cultures rather than isolate themselves from them.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

Am I? At least my (even if farfetched) has more evidence for it than the bogus Russian-election interference claim that the Democrats are pushing.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[DarkOx]

"All lives matter" was is a rebuttal, saying that there is no particularly bad problem with black people being treated differently, and that the cops who kill unarmed black people are justified in doing so. To oppose it does not suggest you don't think that all lives matter, or that you are a black supremacist, it just means you understand why people are saying it, i.e. to undermine BLM.

Of course people are saying to undermine BLM because BLM is wrong! All the statistics show cops do not as a rule kill unarmed black people with any greater frequency than they kill any other unarmed group and actually less. BLM was and continues to actively push narratives like 'hands up don't shoot' that don't reflect what actually happened at all. Is your position a group like BLM should be able to 1) make unsubstantiated claims. 2) be excused for resorting to violence when their lies are challenged?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[AmiMoJo]

The whole point of calling it "all lives matter" instead of "shut up and stop complaining about cops murdering black people" is to trick people. Their movement is not compatible with BLM, they are explicitly opposed to the goals of BLM because they think that black people are more dangerous and it's their own fault when they get shot during a routine traffic stop.

Don't fall for their trick. Citizen's United aren't a coalition of ordinary citizens. People's Choice aren't really the people's choice. National socialism isn't really socialism. Look past the name.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Let me repeat once again.

We can go back and forth about ethics of what happened, make, support or debunk our assumptions who thought or meant what, who had the actual moral high ground - and it won't matter shit. What matters is how it looked like.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, only a total idiot would interpret black lives matter, as "other lives don't matter". Sorry, but there is no "ALM" movement, it's just backlash against BLM. I know quite a few racist people unfortunately, and it's no coincidence that they're the only ones who ever talk about "all lives matter".

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Once again.

We can go back and forth about ethics of what happened, make, support or debunk our assumptions who thought or meant what, who had the actual moral high ground - and it won't matter shit. What matters is how it looked like.

Take the message at face value, and accept it at face value, and if the *actual* value doesn't match, then you have exposed the lie. Attack first, the lie lives on and you get the label of the villain.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[DarkOx]

Russia clearly elected lots of disinformation and stirred disagreement over the election. They have been doing that for years! They knowing attempt to break down our society and attempt to get us to turn on our founding principles like the free expression of ideas. They can't fight us nose to nose so they try to tear us down from the inside.

The thing with this Trump/Russia fake scandal is that there is no there there. Its been 10 months! If there was real evidence of and actual crime that would get a President impeached it would have leaked by now. You need to ask yourself what could possibly be more disruptive and do more harm to this country right now than a highly controversial impeachment trial? A trial where the only certain outcome is that about 30% of the country will insist it was "fixed" and reject the result, another 10% will accept the result but be deeply resentful it was allowed to take place, %30 who will be thrilled and boastful deepening the resentment of the other group, and the rest undecided and mixed. All that irrespective of if such a trial results in conviction or not! We are very polarized and an impeachment + senate trial would go a long way to tearing this nation apart.

So if the Russians did participate in some kind of illegal collusion with the sitting POTUS, they would ensure the smoking gun evidence leaked themselves (while officially denying any involvement naturally)!

Re:The key is not getting caught

[thereitis]

Why didn't the other protesters make him take the sign down? That's messed up.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[AmiMoJo]

If you take the message at face value it's no wonder you fall for all these simple tricks.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[AmiMoJo]

Okay, you believe that it's fine, but what's not fine is deliberately trolling people. By all means present your stats and make your case, but no need to go around calling them black supremacists and claiming that they don't care about non-white lives.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[mSparks43]

Its great init.
All we have to do is point them at each other and watch America burn while we get on with getting wealthy running the world in the void left where America once was.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[mSparks43]

Those voting machines in states that forbid recounts took a little more effort. but the payoff was worth it.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[swb]

I'm always curious about the long-term nature of "destabilization" as a conflict goal. You have to have a society that's already highly unstable for "destabilization" to achieve any payoff in the near term.

If you add up all the BLM protests and every other minor protest and riot over the last 5 years it doesn't equal a mild week during the late 1960s or early 1970s. US civil society is pretty peaceful and despite the crowing of Trump supporters and critics, they aren't taking to the streets to fight each other. So any destabilization campaign the Russians might be pursuing appears to have a payoff potential so far down the road that Putin can't really expect it to do much for him.

The idea that it's oriented towards destabilizing the Federal government? I don't really buy that either. Congress has been deadlocked and dysfunctional for a decade or longer, and even getting Trump elected alone is something of buying into the myth of an all-powerful President. The power lies in the office and the thousands of lifelong bureaucrats that make up the executive branches, nearly all of whom have too much of a stake in the status quo to allow Trump at his most dangerous accomplish much.

And Trump himself really hasn't come off as an action-oriented actor -- he's all bellicose swagger.

Anyway, the TL;DR is that I do think Russia's goals are more "destabilization" than any kind of Trump-specific conspiracy, yet at the same time the payoff seems so unlikely and so far off in the future that it makes me question if its really any kind of organized goal.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[dave420]

BLM isn't a racial supremacy group. Characterising it as such isn't helping anyone.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[dave420]

FYI the statistics show that black and Latino people are far more likely to encounter physical violence from the police. It's not just about being killed, but unwarranted severe physical abuse which affects lives and livelihoods.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[oh_my_080980980]

You mean when she kicked them out at a speaking engagement...

Re:The key is not getting caught

[dave420]

Trump chose his skin colour, and there has not been institutional racism against orange people in the US since its inception. If you want to get rid of double standards, at least try to realise where one is being applied.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Hey, it's definitely helping Trump get the votes. It also helps Russia in dividing America and gaining influence. It's helping the police in maintaining power. It helps the business of firearms manufacturers. It sells news stories.

Your definition of "everybody" is very narrow.

And BLM behaving violently at the merest hint of disagreement is definitely not helping their case.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[ganjadude]

who were the activists in this election? - the left

if it was found out during the election, it would have came out that russia was paying for hillarys people to protest. it would have been WAY worse for her than it was to begin with

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Heh. You don't even understand what the simple trick Russia pulled off was, do you? You still didn't even notice, that you took the bait, hook, line and sinker, becoming target of hate of the stupid and the average and a laughing stock for the smart? You still have no clue how Clinton lost?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to list some other cherry-picked bull shit to show that the system which has consistently produced better education outcomes

Its kind of funny you complain about cherry-picking. Because that's what you did by focusing on the one item in the entire article which the authors literally spell out is the single statistic that the charter school supporters like to cite while ignoring all the others like:

Notably, the state’s charter schools scored worse on that test than their traditional public-school counterparts, according to an analysis of federal data.

Critics say Michigan’s laissez-faire attitude about charter-school regulation has led to marginal and, in some cases, terrible schools in the state’s poorest communities as part of a system dominated by for-profit operators.

The results in Michigan are so disappointing that even some supporters of school choice are critical of the state’s policies.

The summary is that charter schools in rich areas work out great just like public schools in rich areas work out great because being rich is great. But charter schools in poor areas work out worse than public schools in poor areas. And since black americans, on average have just a 14 cents for every dollar that white americans have, that means black people will end up attending the shittiest charter schools.

Furthermore, multiple independent researchers studying the three of the largest voucher systems in the country have all found that vouchers uniformly produce crappier outcomes than public education.

NYT: Dismal Voucher Results Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era Begins

But even as school choice is poised to go national, a wave of new research has emerged suggesting that private school vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are startling — the worst in the history of the field, researchers say.

The new voucher studies stand in marked contrast to research findings that well-regulated charter schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere have a strong, positive impact on test scores. But while vouchers and charters are often grouped under the umbrella of “school choice,” the best charters tend to be nonprofit public schools, open to all and accountable to public authorities. The less “private” that school choice programs are, the better they seem to work.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for illustrating his point. You literally did what he said you would: Lie and misconstrue.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[mpercy]

FBI statistics also indicate that black commit extremely disproportionately skewed numbers of murders & manslaughter (52.2% of all murder/manslaughter committed by blacks), rapes (31.3% of all rapes committed by blacks), robbery (56.4% of all robbery committed by blacks), assault (33.9% of all assaults committed by blacks). On the positive side, only 12.5% of DWI are committed by blacks.

As a part of the overall population, blacks are about 13.5% of the US population, but commit more than half of all homicides and robberies, and one-third of all rapes and assaults.

Also on the positive side, the FBI asserts that a hugely disproportionate number of those crimes attributed to blacks are largely concentrated within a few hundred thousand young men involved in gangs. And largely victimize other black people.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

You chose to pick one specific interpretation of "All lives matter", specifically assuming ill intent, putting in the mouth of ALM protesters words they didn't say,

How can you not perceive ALM as in opposition to BLM, as it came afterwards - it's a specific rebuttal - designed to undermine the message BLM was trying to convey?
Much in the way that Trump would have have you believe that NFL players kneeling during the national anthem has anything to do with the holy and sacred Flag or disrespecting the military - it's a direct attempt to undermine the message and Make America White Again.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[sycodon]

Excuse me, but by far the majority of the Protesters were Left Wing Wack Jobs.

In fact, I can't even recall a Protest by anyone other than Left Wing Wack Jobs.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[sycodon]

I don't what it is with you people and your Rube Goldberg logic on things.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[mpercy]

[WaPo]

Police have shot and killed a young black man (ages 18 to 29) — such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. —175 times since January 2015; 24 of them were unarmed. Over that same period, police have shot and killed 172 young white men, 18 of whom were unarmed. Once again, while in raw numbers there were similar totals of white and black victims, blacks were killed at rates disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population.

About 13 percent of all black people who have been fatally shot by police since January 2015 were unarmed, compared with 7 percent of all white people.

[/WaPo]

According to FBI statistics, 52.2% of all murder/manslaughter was committed by blacks. Blacks are 13.5% of the population.
According to FBI statistics, 56.4% of all robbery was committed by blacks. Blacks are 13.5% of the population.
According to FBI statistics, 31.3% of all rape was committed by blacks. Blacks are 13.5% of the population.
According to FBI statistics, 33.9% of all aggravated assault was committed by blacks. Blacks are 13.5% of the population.

On the positive side, the FBI says many of those crimes are highly concentrated in a small fraction of the black population in criminal gangs, where they most often prey on each other. The larger black population is no more criminal than the rest of the populace.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Did you miss the wording from my first post? " A couple trolls under the flag of 'All lives matter' "

In a casino, playing Poker, you're sure your opponent is bluffing. The bet is rather large currently. Choose correct course of action:

a) Play cautiously. Match the bet and Call.
b) Go all in. Call.
c) Fold.
d) Attack the opponent with your fists.

Apparently, BLM members believe d) is the best course of action.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[mpercy]

Why are you so focused on the color of his skin?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[gotan]

The protesters aren't phony.

According to the article these "Russian Troll factories" supported real protesters.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Curunir_wolf]

No link? BTW consortiumnews doesn't count.

I found it pretty quick. On MSN, no less.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

I don't know if ALM grew up and changed... maybe they did, maybe they didn't, but I know for a fact when they were starting, they didn't give a fuck - they were just a bunch of trolls of 4chan, with loose rightist affiliation and no actual agenda beyond "get the niggas to chimp out for teh lulz." Yes, the issue is real. The slogan is catchy and valid. The organization behind it... uh.

I saw some guys on 4chan/k/ (gun nuts board), organizing themselves to go to a protest, armed with fully legally owned weapons, provoke with ALM banners, then shoot people attacking them, "in self defense". It actually happened. Media spun it initially as armed assailants shooting at innocent protesters, but the story got hushed very quickly because yes, everything went according to the plan and they indeed did shoot in self-defense (if awfully eagerly) and it wouldn't do liberal media much good to publish the narrative that was accepted by the court. It was a sickening, but - all too expectable outcome.

So - the distrust towards ALM is absolutely justified. But attacking them physically is absolutely stupid. The general public buys the story as pushed by the trolls, BLM has been proven to be a violent organization beyond all doubt, a big shadow has been cast on the BLM case, and all because none of the people in BLM stopped for a minute to think and realize they are being played. They never thought of any solution beyond the use of their fists.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[butchersong]

Based on this article it looks like Russia was funding BLM forums and such. I'd think that would help Hillary more than Donald. In reality it looks like they were stirring the pot on both sides which is kind of what they've always done which isn't too dissimilar to what we do in Russian by covertly supporting opposition parties in their country. In other words, nothing has changed and this story of them subverting the election is simply selectively highlighting something that has always been in the background for the purposes of pushing a certain narrative.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[dunkelfalke]

Apparently you have stopped reading after the first half of the sentence. Here in Germany about 3% of the population are Russians. Studies repeatedly have shown that they are among the best integrated foreigners, far better integrated than, for example, the Turks. Matter of fact, many Russians in Germany think that there are far too many foreigners here, especially from Muslim countries, who simply are unwilling to be assimilated.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[bgalbrecht]

You don't need to cherry pick data because you're obviously starting with the conclusion and not bothering to even look at the data.

I don't know why India is building more power plants, but I suspect part of the motivation is politics. Toshiba filed for bankruptcy after buying Westinghouse because of cost overruns in Georgia and SC. The US Department of Energy says that for new energy generation before subsidies wind energy is comparable to natural gas production, solar is about 20% more expensive, and new nuclear and coal plants are about 80% more expensive than wind and natural gas. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf (note: had to go to 2015 to get coal).

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Curunir_wolf]

If you really want the truth about the activities of the Clintons and their various similarly named foundations, start with the investigations by Charles Ortel, then check out the actual claimed accomplishments of the Clinton Global Initiative. The Haitians are either ungrateful or have a legitimate beef with the Clintons, you decide.

If you haven't decided to ignore all of that because it causes cognitive dissonance for you, feel free to dig a little further. The list of organizations set up by the Clintons to accept money and distribute it is long. Don't forget about the CGI and related orgs, the William J. Clinton foundation, not to be confused with the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, and see if any of the tax filings actually make sense. Some have pointed out that filings in different states or countries actually contradict each other. Donations have been listed that pre-date the formation of some of the organizations.

It's for charity???

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Kogun]

What do you mean "Russia didn't get caught during the election"? Were you not paying attention? Do you not recall Donna Brazil and others in the DNC yelling "THE RUSSIANS!" on TV when she got caught cheating for Hillary? Did you even read TFA and check the links and dates it was referencing? Because if you had, you would have found the reference to the June 2, 2015 NYTimes magazine article by Andrew Chen, which is basically the same information being "revealed" (for the first time, to you, apparently) by the Guardian's reference to the RBC article.

Deep investigative journalism on Russian trolling had been reported on over a year before the election. It did not matter. And months before the election, supposed Wikileaks connection to Russia was being promoted regularly in the news cycle in any major media outlet (that wasn't FoxNews). Again, it didn't matter.

The reality is that, in spite of the well-publicized Russian influence well in advance of the election, people still voted the way they did.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[ScentCone]

Way to deflect with lazy ad hominem instead of providing any actual substance that presents the facts in a different light. Essentially, you're working to prove him right by showing that even though you're trying to wish away the facts, the best you can come up with is juvenile insult instead of actual information.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Narcocide]

Yes, but neither of those groups were aware they were being paid by non-citizens to essentially commit treason.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Herkum01]

If you READ the actually data It simply says ARRESTS, not convictions or that they actually committed the crime. don't confuse the two.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[PopeRatzo]

Why didn't the other protesters make him take the sign down? That's messed up.

That was addressed. The guy would only pull out the sign for the photo op.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Narcocide]

Well, the thing is she wasn't, at first. She only pivoted to supporting them because after that day Bernie ceded the stage to them at his own rally she didn't want to appear to be racist or uncaring by comparison.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[cyberchondriac]

But you believe:
1) The left doesn't do the same thing, x10.
2) Most of the paid protesters for leftist activities engaged in normal protesting methods, just for cash and giggles.

WaPO and Salon don't exactly espouse neutral ideals. Might as well cite stormfront for as objective as they are.

I've seen an awful lot of photos where many protestors are smiling and laughing, it's just a gig to them, there's no real outrage there.
They either just want "to be part of history", engage in a protest like their parents once did, or, they're just paid shills, by either Russia or Soros.
It's is not a right wing thing to protest in the streets in general, the confederate war monuments recently excluded.
If Russia benefits, it's by making this country more divisive, and everyone screaming victimhood and flinging accusations of hate and privilege everywhere pushes that agenda right along. The country is more divided than it has been in decades, but it started before Trump.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SargentDU]

Your example of Duke Lacross is a case where the female involved did fake her rape by any one of the teammates who's careers were destroyed by her claims.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[greythax]

Trump chose to look like an orange raccoon. The difference would seem obvious.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

If you've ever thought to yourself "damn right all lives matter" them you're racist.

I'll just isolate this piece leaving it for all to see the lunacy you represent.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Ian A. Shill]

I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.jfklibrary.org/Res...

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

I can imagine the AIDS support group response: "Look dude, that's not exactly our focus but we share a theme, we should be able to help each other out. Say, you get your cancer friends, we could meet sometimes, exchange experiences, we sometimes have field trips and we're a couple guys short so we could invite you, or something like that. We could even get someone to lobby the government to fund both AIDS and cancer cure research, jointly."

I don't think beating that guy to a pulp is exactly the first kind of response I'd be thinking of.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[ArmoredDragon]

No, they just want their vote.

The Democrats, believe it or not, are doing black people way more harm than good by constantly sowing division and telling black people that they can't succeede on their own merits without the party (which is mostly white men) providing social justice. Equality is impossible to obtain, (diversity and equality are mutually exclusive) but if you're aiming towards that end, telling a whole group of people that they require a handicap does the total opposite. As Morgan Freeman put it: believing your race holds you back is like a religion; It's a good excuse for not getting there. The Democrats know this, and they play into it by blaming everything on "angry white men". They've also discarded the lessons of the civil rights era, and completely thrown out Martin Luther King's message (if they had honored his message, we'd be a lot better off now.)

Re: The key is not getting caught

[i286NiNJA]

It would be easy to get enraged by "all lives matter" if everytime you went onto facebook someone was saying "We'll soon find out what philando castle was really doing.. it always comes out in the wash that these thugs are violent drug dealers who didn't do nuthin!! O coarse the MSM doesn't ever report on it. ALL LIVES MATTER!!"

All of these sides have a rational face and a spastic face they like to use depending on the audience.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[i286NiNJA]

. What matters is how it looked like.

Exactly and when you say "All lives matter" it makes you look like a nazi.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Powercntrl]

I'm sure it did, but if it were only them, then Trump would not have won. He won because he had support from non-white and non-male voters.

I never said Trump only had the support of the younger, straight, white, male voters. I said his campaign promises resonated especially well with them. Look at photos/videos from his rallies. Hillary didn't have anything like that. It's hard to get anyone excited about the status quo. It was also painfully obvious Hillary was being disingenuous in pandering to Bernie Sanders supporters, after his loss in the primaries.

The media (or "fake news", if you prefer) would have you believe that Hillary makes her "deplorables" remark, and *poof*, there goes the vote from a whole bunch of registered Republican voters who were on the fence. Trump calls Mexicans "rapists", and *poof*, there goes his Latino support down the drain. Actual psychological studies have shown most people's political views aren't quite so malleable, and hearing negative information/facts about their chosen candidate can, paradoxically, further reinforce their support. The irony is, most of us know from personal experience how futile it is to argue politics with family/friends/online, yet will simultaneously hold the belief that some voters must be flip/flopping between candidates when an "October surprise" is unleashed.

If you look at the number of eligible voters who simply didn't even vote, it becomes obvious that rousing your supporters and getting them to the polls is far more important than the exercise in futility of attempting to convince your opponent's supporters to change sides. Most of Hillary's TV ads were slinging mud at Trump. Most of Trump's TV ads were about the jobs he'd be creating, how he'd be protecting the safety of our country, and how much less taxes the average American family would be paying.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[HornWumpus]

Most violent crime is in the same race. Black victims are less likely to produce convictions. If anything the black violent crime rate is higher.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an issue with that though, many charter schools get to pick which students they accept, and of course will accept only the better performing ones.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Rakarra]

Maybe you should read TFA, the Putin trolls were paying left leaning activists.

The Russian trolls were pushing for Trump, but when it seemed like Hillary was going to win, they switched tactics to counter her expected Presidency: attack the system instead. Make it seem like the whole US system was corrupt and doom. Foster as much acrimony as possible, set groups against one another so Russia can point to the US and say that it's too chaotic to be reliable, to be trustworthy, and that Moscow has their stuff in order.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Kogun]

Do yourself a favor and get Google Earth. Have a close flyover of Haiti. Check the dates of the imagery and make sure to dial it back to dates well after the post-Haiti disaster relief. Find the factory built with CF efforts. Look at the housing in the area. Look on youtube and find out what the Haitians think of the CF and the help the contractors gave them.

This is part of the research you need to do. I've done it. Find out what "doing charity work" really meant to Haiti's population and not just the US contractors that were paid to build iron-gated vacation home neighborhoods to live in while they, "did charity work". I've seen the 85% number you cite, and believe it to be accurate as far as what is technically legal to say on paper about such things. But I went at least a step further to find out what "doing charity work" resulted in. I was not impressed. I didn't start my research with Google Earth, of course. It was after I saw the stuff on youtube about the failure of aid in Haiti. (Not just youtube, there's a PBS report that is fairly damning.) I was fairly suspicious, as such things seem to be easily fake-able. Just some guy showing some damaged buildings, interviewing poor people. Could be anywhere. That's when I turned to Google Earth.

Short of going to Haiti, my research ability is pretty limited. Still, satellite pictures are hard to fake. Seeing entire neighborhood after neighborhood of rubbled buildings, still being lived in, with blue tarps for roofs doesn't tell the whole story, of course, but it does more to corroborate failure of the CF than the CF narrative of success in Haiti that has been touted.

I'm not endorsing anything that Trump or any right-wing news groups have said about CF. That's certainly tainted bullshit, but just because they are full of bs doesn't make what the CF any better. I have no doubt the Trump Foundation is nothing but a poorly disguised PR/money making scheme. The CF seems to be a far more successful version of the same scheme. And when it is discovered that Ivanka is maintaining a list of TF donors and using it to fast-track those VIPs to sit-downs with Trump, I'll be screaming right alongside you with outrage.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

Did you miss the wording from my first post? " A couple trolls under the flag of 'All lives matter' " In a casino, playing Poker, you're sure your opponent is bluffing. The bet is rather large currently. Choose correct course of action: a) Play cautiously. Match the bet and Call. b) Go all in. Call. c) Fold. d) Attack the opponent with your fists. Apparently, BLM members believe d) is the best course of action.

How many people did they have to taunt before they found someone willing to engage in d)?

You ask for perfection and are predictably disappointed.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

uhh... according to...?

Anyone who hesitates between voting Trump and Clinton?

Or is such hesitation also a sign of being Nazi?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Rakarra]

The Russians didn't *fake* anything for the elections.

Oh hell, there was a fair amount of fake news. Most of it didn't make it to the top of 'respected' news outlets, but there was a whole undercurrent going through Facebook, etcetc of fake stories spread around, and not limited to one candidate either.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Apparently there were way more of these wanting to go the violent way than these willing to reach out to them. And way more willing to go violent than those who'd dare to shun violence and call out to the violent ones to stop.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

FBI statistics also indicate that black commit extremely disproportionately skewed numbers of murders & manslaughter (52.2% of all murder/manslaughter committed by blacks), rapes (31.3% of all rapes committed by blacks), robbery (56.4% of all robbery committed by blacks), assault (33.9% of all assaults committed by blacks). On the positive side, only 12.5% of DWI are committed by blacks.

Don't you mean that blacks are extremely disproportionately convicted of a skewed number of murders & manslaughter?

The FBI rates would be based on successfully prosecuted court cases, of course. So if the police were biased against black defendants and the courts were biased against black defendants, wouldn't you actually expect to see a disproportionately higher rate of conviction of black suspects? The courts don't even need to wrongfully convict many suspects to skew the statistics, they would just need to fail to convict a higher proportion of non-black defendants.

You might want to really think about how you would prove that the courts are biased for a while, and then see if you can do that.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Rakarra]

"Black Lives Matter" was always a horrible slogan. It got a hell of a lot worse during the primaries when the Democratic candidates were expected to (and explicitly did) repudiate "All Lives Matter," and cotton specifically to Black Lives Matter. I would have hoped that the BLM organizers would have been savvy enough and maybe think twice about a title and slogan meant to "stick it" to the other side, but when you choose Michael Brown as your poster child, you're already not exactly playing with a full deck.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[r1348]

Ironically, the Russians probably used the same methods Hillary first tested worldwide to undermine Russian interests.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Rob Y.]

It's not even a backlash - in the sense that anybody believes it's meaningful, much less something to base a movement on.

What it is is a focus group-tested canned response to 'Black Lives Matter' that's fed to Fox News viewers so they can say something slightly more palatable than "Ummm, errr, what's the big deal - I'm not sure cops killing unarmed black people for being uppity is so bad".

Re:The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

Because of the shameless right-wing media, we have a large portion of the electorate living in an alternate reality. Many years of Fox News and right-wing radio created it, and this is why they were primed for Trump’s ridiculous promises. The Russians love this, of course. Not only are Americans divided over nonsense issues the other half doesn’t even know about, (heard about the upcoming Anftifa coup?), they have a fool in the White House.

And this is pretty much the Russian goal. Divide Americans and push them into stupid decisions. Push the idiot in chief into alienating America's allies and isolating the United States on the world stage. The Russian goal isn't to destroy America, it's to enable Russia to act with relative impunity so it can take whatever it thinks it can get away with taking. Like it or not, the Russians recognized that Trump was going to hurt America and benefit the Russians and that's why they worked to make sure you elected him, while the election rigging barely worked, it worked and now too many Americans are just too stupid to realize that Trump is working beyond the wildest dreams of the Russian propagandists who started on their mad quest to get him elected.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because the left values the color of the skin more than the content of the character. It's the easiest way to classify, isolate, and divide people.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Rakarra]

. What matters is how it looked like.

Exactly and when you say "All lives matter" it makes you look like a nazi.

Yes! Exactly, this is what the Nazis stood for: that all lives from all races are equally important and deserve equal treatment before the law.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[LynnwoodRooster]

So, what you're saying is that Trump is culturally appropriating from the Oompa Looompas and thus is racist...

Re:The key is not getting caught

[LynnwoodRooster]

Huh, I wanted to impeach Obama because he constantly issued unconstitutional executive orders and used the powers of the Government to politically attack his opponents. His skin color had nothing to do with it.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Highdude702]

Black lives matter don't really care about black peoples lives. FTFY

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Thelasko]

Part of the problem is the slogan "Black lives matter" is too short. People are left to fill in the rest of the slogan themselves. This leads to a variety of interpretations for Black Lives Matter...

• ...more than white lives

• ...more than police officer's lives

• ...as much as anyone else's.

The interpretation of the first two results in things like the "All Lives Matter" movement. The last interpretation is essentially the same as "All Lives Matter".

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

Detroit Free Press -- an unapologetically Communist (by their own admission) newspaper.

Now who's lying? My parents have gotten the Free Press for at least the last 25 years and there's nothing Communist about it. Believe me, they wouldn't read it if it was. Nothing shows up on Google either. Where did you even get that idea?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[jjohn_h]

>>> it took a fundamental breakdown over just about everything to make a guy who used to be a Simpson's joke our actual president. >>>

It took an electoral law that gave second place to the first past-the-post by 2.8m votes.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

Which is why I don't think he is an idiot. I've demonstrated on a few occasions that he is a liar though. If his points were so obviously true, he wouldn't need to lie to prove them.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

In Soviet Russia, the Troll is You!!!

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

Does it matter?

Whether they were in support of the troops of Trump to give them a boost, in support of Hillary's troops to discredit, on both sides for both or the reverse, or neither, it's ALWAYS Trumps' fault and we can ALWAYS blame the Russians in each and every case! It's a win-win blaming situation whatever the Russians or Trump does!! Even decades from now, we can say it were the Russians all along, every time a president is elected we don't like!

It's almost a gracious gift, if it weren't the Russians are involved, so it can't be, because they never give or do anything good, as we've established.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

Even worse! I think I notice even some anti-anti-anti-pseudo-anti-troll-troll-trolls!!

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

Nuclear are more expensive not because of construction or safety concerns. Most of the costs are regulatory. Whereas "renewables" still get the benefit of direct and windfall from indirect subsidies (eg. subsidies which were recently given to promote R&D would be indirect ones).

I don't know why India is building more power plants,

Maybe you didn't. But you do now. Because per-kW generation is cheapest with nuclear.

Toshiba filed for bankruptcy after buying Westinghouse because of cost overruns in Georgia and SC.

Most likely because of regulatory hurdles put in the way of new construction by the previous administration.

You don't need to cherry pick data because you're obviously starting with the conclusion

Conclusion? There are multiple instances of Clintons breaking laws. There is only one instance of Clintons suffering any legal repercussions for their law breaking -- Bill Clinton's disbarment. There are multiple occasions on which Clintons publically stated that they had no interest in abiding by laws which restricted behaviors of the people who were in positions which they (Clintons) occupied at the time. So, yeah, serial recidivism of Clintons is public knowledge and I do take it into account when reaching my conclusions.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Anonymous Coward]

BLM isn't a group it's a movement. It's not a movement of hate, but a movement designed to bring attention

"Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon!"

"What do we want, DEAD COPS! When do we want it, NOW!"

A so-called movement that led to the death of innocent police officers in Dallas Tx. They are a group of useful idiots, defended and promoted by the same.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

Maybe you should have a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

Not if you take the demographics in account. The correlation is not between killing and race; cops do not kill based on race, but based on the amount of criminal activity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If you use statistics, you should use them well. There is no correlation between race, but there is between demographics and crime rate.

Blacks are 14 times more likely to be killed by other blacks (which is way higher than by cops, btw) than whites are by whites: is this proof they're racist against each other?

It seems it is incomprehensible to you, but try to leave your emo-bias out of it, and think logically: if you have hundred blacks where 80 are committing crimes, and you have 100 whites, where 20 are committing crimes, the police is going to arrest - indeed - 4 times more blacks than whites. And rightly so. This DOES NOT show any racist motives on the part of the police.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[skids]

How is it acceptable to refer to President Trump as the "orange moron" yet it was totally unacceptable to refer to President Obama's skin color as though it mattered, or had anything to do with anything?

Because Obama didn't get that way by using a tanning bed in a hysterical fit of vanity. Or just due to hundreds of years of historical oppression. Take your pick.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

Indeed. Some leftist-thinking (if that is what they do) emo's are often quick to conclude that, because there are more blacks in jail or being arrested, it's because of racism and nothing else. They throw numbers around of the amount of people being incarcerated for instance, and note that there are more blacks than whites in jail.

But as you rightly point out, blacks DO commit far more murders and other heavy crimes, in comparison to their demographics.There are a lot of reasons for it, and leftists of course blame it on society, racism, poverty and what not, but the fact is and remains; they DO.

So it's normal there are more blacks in jail, since they commit more crimes. This is no proof, thus, of any racism. The left never seems to comprehend this (or more to the point: they don't wish to comprehend it).

Re: The key is not getting caught

[AmiMoJo]

Ben Shapiro? Do you have a better source, or at least one that backs this up?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[aphelion_rock]

This is unlikely to happen a second time.
Come the next election, the US public and media will have their troll detectors on full sensitivity. Particularly where nasty Kremlin types are involved.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

, comrade!

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

Ben often quotes his sources; mostly they're government sources. I'm told he is willing to send it over to people who ask for it nicely, so go ahead...

Re:The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

I can't even remember the last time a right winger passed a basic logic test for consideration for an interview at my job.

Just like in Hollywood, they know they need to be smart enough to hide it. It's the 1st rule of dealing with the insane -- adopt their world view or you don't have any chance of getting through when talking to them.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[superwiz]

I didn't. The article he used to justify his lies did. It only cited the Stanford study and the Communist "Detroit Free Press". I addressed them both in my reply.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

But Russians spent more on Clintons (both Bill and Hillary) than that. In fact, RF paid out 500k to Bill Clinton for just 1 speech. Hundreds of millions of dollars were donated to Clinton foundation by state-actor donors. 85% of that money was spent on Clinton family expenses rather than on charity. How is this someone not getting caught? There was nothing to catch. Clintons were openly bribed by foreign powers. Why would Russians spend millions on Clintons in the open only to go and then spend a few hundred thousand on Trump in secret? The whole Russian influence story doesn't make any sense if you consider all the publicly known information which you are asked to not consider as part of the story. Why are unproven accusations and innuendos (that Russia helped Trump) more important than what is known for a fact (that Russia helped Clinton)?

Because there is only on true statement in this paragraph that you wrote? It was Renaissance Capital (a Russian Bank) that paid Bill Clinton for the speech, not the Russian Federation. Hundreds of millions of dollars were not donated to the Clinton foundation by (Russian) state-actor donors. The Clinton Foundation is an audited charity, around 89% of money raised is spent on their charitable work. There is no evidence that the Clintons were bribed, openly or otherwise by any foreign powers. The Russians didn't "spend millions" on the Clintons, in fact, Putin kind of hates Hillary Clinton's guts because she openly questioned whether he had been legitimately elected the last time he rigged the Russian elections.

The one true thing: "There was nothing to catch". Maybe Russia tried to influence Hillary through Bill, but there's no evidence that it did happen, and Hillary had no influence on the decisions they supposedly wanted her to have made. This is nothing more a pernicious lie that you believe despite all the evidence saying you're wrong. Russia did help Trump, we're seeing more and more evidence of that every day, unlike the tired old distraction story that Trump's people, and now you, are circulating. This story is meant to distract you from the fact that Putin picked Trump because he's weak, unstable, and soft on Russia. They helped the wrong man get elected, and you're going to pay for it.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[kenai_alpenglow]

Listening to what BLM state, I'm pretty sure they really do mean other lives don't matter. ("Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon")

Re: The key is not getting caught

[kenai_alpenglow]

Proof: What have they done about stopping black-on-black violence?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[bgalbrecht]

No, you've only claimed that I'm a liar because the items I sourced don't confirm your claims, and then you make up excuses why the point I made that the Clinton Foundation is a legitimate charitable foundation was false. But it's not worth attempting to refute you, because you're willing to make claims and not back them up with sources.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Rakarra]

Hate him for how fucking bad of a president he is. How bad of a person he is.

Don't hate him for petty shit - his hair, his hand size, his foundation / powder ?

I usually don't go off on Trump's appearance, but his cheap, tacky spray-looking fake tan says something weird about him. Yeah, I will lump him along with the other folks who do those horrible things to their skin. The plastic Hollywood types too. It's just tacky. Everything about the guy speaks of no taste. There are much, MUCH worse traits, but the appearance is yet another questionable personality trait to throw onto the pile of everything else.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

The cop who shot the (white) driver who merely informed him that he has a legally owned weapon in the car, when asked if he has anything the cop should know about?

We can cherry-pick examples where one or the other side gets the short end of the stick from the Police, all day. We can bid whose cases are more abhorrent.

Or we can agree that police brutality is a problem that touches everyone to some degree, and fight it together.

Or alternatively, you can jump me with your fists and keep beating me until I say what you want, right? That's how BLM goes about that after all.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Matter of attribution remains. A lot of stupid trolls, a lot of paranoid people, a lot of news outlets hunting for sensation. How much of that is Russian? Likely we'll never know.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Highdude702]

So you're saying that just because All Lives Matter came after Black Lives Matter, it has to be opposition? That sounds rather partisan to me. You should probably sit back and think about what you actually said. And hopefully you will see the flawed thinking in it. This whole thing in my opinion is stupid, Black lives matter, the same as White or Brown or whatever color you can think when you see people. The only people saying otherwise are truly racist and don't see people for who they truly are. I don't care what color your skin is, I care about the person you are and the skills you bring to the table. I have no time for that other nonsense, as I have to make time to post on Slashdot.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Rakarra]

yet will simultaneously hold the belief that some voters must be flip/flopping between candidates when an "October surprise" is unleashed

Some voters flip flop. Some are actually undecided. I don't think that was the case in 2016 though. What happened with the October Surprise last year, and what has happened before, is that voters don't leave candidate A and join candidate B -- instead they leave candidate A and just don't vote at all. They don't show up.

So voters aren't malleable enough that you can convince them to switch their votes, but they are malleable enough for you to erode their excitement for a candidate until they get to the point where they say "everything is shit, why even bother?"

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Highdude702]

This is why nobody takes you seriously. Because a "Nazi" would say all lives matter...Anybody not a "Nazi" Would say "(preferred race here) Lives Matter!" because that makes all the sense in the world.. . .

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Highdude702]

It has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter, you people just don't have any respect for the Men and Women who FOUGHT/FIGHT daily for your Right to kneel during the National Anthem. You mean nothing to this country as a whole except cancer!

Re:The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

Its been 10 months! If there was real evidence of and actual crime that would get a President impeached it would have leaked by now.

Things don't go quite that quickly. It took over 2 years to go from the start of Watergate to Richard Nixon's resignation, for example.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Cinnamon Beige]

Part of the negative reaction to Black Lives Matter has to do with the problematic history of the African-American Civil Rights movement having an unfortunately tendency to view race in a very...well...black-and-white manner; this is part of why you have had the effort to get it more inclusive, even if many of the terms proposed that would include the other non-white minorities have had problems since they've used terms that have been used as synonyms for African-American. It gets particularly nasty when you're one of the groups which is just generally pale--and it's rude to say that it's 'easier' if you can pass, because it carries the assumption that anybody who can wants to. (Personal advice here? Suggesting abandoning their identity is a really easy way to piss off anybody from a group which has been subjected to forcible attempts to absorb them--you're basically suggesting their efforts to retain and/or reclaim their identity was stupid.)

Black Lives Matter could have picked a better name, or could have gone from the start with "We can only speak for ourselves"--broken themselves from the history of erasure of other people of color, either by including them or taking the view that it's inappropriate to pretend to speak for them but it's explicitly okay for them to protest injustices against them. Instead, they've failed to distance themselves--which it is necessary for them to do--from the unfortunately functionally racist parts of their history, since I don't think there's really much else you could call things like whining when the Latinos point out that hey, the cops are doing that to us too! Shut up, help them organize Latino Lives Matter or change your name to Colored Lives Matter or something, just don't make it sound like they're racist for pointing out it isn't just African-Americans whom the cops are reacting inappropriately with deadly force.

Some of us are also having a problem with the fact that they're not also protesting things like how African-American victims of crime are generally considered less newsworthy than white ones--don't they matter, too?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

When dealing with propagandists, it will always be staged to look that way.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Look. In times of Martin Luther King, the Blacks managed to get their point through, with peaceful protests. They didn't pick the bait, they were victims of violence but still didn't get violent in return. Somehow that worked.

Currently there is absolutely no doubt it's the BLM who initiated the violence. Maybe they were provoked. Maybe there was some reporting bias - though I seriously doubt that, because Liberal media would be first to report about BLM extending hand for cooperation and getting shunned. No, simply this generation of Blacks picks violent assault as the first option, not the last, when all peaceful options fail. There is no valid excuse for that.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Probably money. Fomenting chaos allows Russian oligarchs to make moves mostly unnoticed. Russia's main economy is petrochemical based; getting the US to pull out of the Paris Accords was a huge win for them.

Trump has stated that he doesn't think we need all those life-long bureaucrats, and is most likely not filling various positions on purpose. To quote, “A lot of those jobs, I don’t want to appoint someone because they’re unnecessary to have. In government, we have too many people.” He is purposely crippling various agencies, especially the EPA with Scott Pruitt. As an Oklahoman who has lived under Pruitt as our AG it is truly frightening to know the damage this man can cause. Loosening up various "rules" doesn't directly help Russia, but it does let them point a finger at the US and say "well, the USA is doing XYZ so..."

Finally, I don't think anyone except Putin knows what the end goal here is. Maybe it's all just a game; he is former KGB. But dividing his biggest opponent can only help him out in whatever it is.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

No, simply this generation of Blacks picks violent assault as the first option, not the last, when all peaceful options fail.

You keep telling yourself that. Surely those black people are fundamentally different from you. It's not like you're all Americans, right? Look down on them if it makes you feel better. Rip yourselves and each other apart for all I care. I'm just pointing out that you're an easily manipulated fool, but you don't have to believe me. You can go back to the people who tell you what you want to hear, I'm sure they have nothing but good intentions for your unthinking obedience. I'm sure the liars, the cheaters, and the con men have nothing but your best interest at heart.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I think the group named themselves. Inner city Ebonics speakers are not known for their spelling.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

It isn't the protesting, it is the type of protesting.

People don't travel to burn down other people's houses and businesses (like in Ferguson) without getting paid, at least the cost of the bus fare.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And perhaps, as of November 4, succeeded.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

RTFGA!

The main topics covered by the groups run from Russia were race relations, Texan independence and gun rights. RBC counted 16 groups relating to the Black Lives Matter campaign and other race issues that had a total of 1.2 million subscribers. The biggest group was entitled Blacktivist and reportedly had more than 350,000 likes at its peak.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

Sorry, but when you are fool enough to source using DailyCaller, RW LIE SITE, there is nothing left but to point out your ignorance.
Your "source" proves you have nothing valid to say.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

And Blacktivist is not BLM.
Nice try for guilt by association.
As usual, rightard failure strikes again

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Considering this was quoting from the Guardian's article, nice try characterizing Brits as Americans.

As usual, liberal labrat fails to find the cheese- or have *any* reading comprehension at all. If anything, Blacktivist ended up the *larger* group, though I'm sure there is some crossover. And you're all just patsies of the Russians- both Democrats *and* Republicans. Anybody who voted for Hillary or Donald in the last election should be deported.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[johnsie]

It's not about helping Hilary or Trump. It's classic divide and conquer. Russia is simply capitalizing on the political polarization in the US. If Americans are fighting each other at home it's more difficult for them to be influential away from home. Russia can benefit from a weaker America, so wants to create political instability. It's basically a proxy war on American soil and Russia is kicking ass right now.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[i286NiNJA]

Yes they would. When they want to be palatable to the general population they're going to say all lives matter (but....).
When they all get together then they'll say what they want. This is fringe politics 101 it doen't matter if you're a fat blue haired femnazi or a jackbooted neo-nazi the game is the same. It also works great when you're russia and you want america divided into crazy groups.

Why say all lives matter anyhow? It's stupid of course they do, please explain to me the deeper meaning here cause I don't get it. "Black lives matter" is a rallying cry and an expression of frustration. There is more to the movement then just the name. I support BLM at least in principal because I know that as a white guy I have experienced police misconduct and I find it very easy to believe that if I were black I'd experience it more.

"Motte and Bailey arguments"

Re: The key is not getting caught

[i286NiNJA]

who is the "you" in "takes you seriously" anyhow?

Who am I? I'm a random person on the internet. You already have some imaginary "me" because you've fallen victim to propaganda. Am I supposed to be BLM? Someone else?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[i286NiNJA]

Radicals always have a presentable face for guests.

I'm sure you've seen the crazy tumblr feminist who says "Oh so what you're saying is that you're ok with raping women" when all you said is something like "I don't know if I should support a group that says 1/2 of all women are getting raped in college so we should pay them to teach men not to rape"
Nazis do the same thing. Most actual nazis were appalled to learn of the holocaust.
Most scientologists don't learn about xenu in their first classes. They're told that people protesting the church are their sworn enemies, mostly a mixture of nazis and psychologists.

This a common trick. You haven't learned this? Do you not believe it happens? I have a fantastic investment I'd like to show you.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[i286NiNJA]

I think you look like a nazi. If you say all lives matter it shows that you care about the issue and you're not BLM. Most people without opinions stay quiet.

A secret nazi.

Maybe later you'll tell me a N*** joke later to see if I laugh and then maybe you'll take me to your den to see your collection of hugo boss uniforms?
Or maybe you're just a normal sucker who will believe anything but where there's smoke there's fire and I have a large pool of people I can pick my 10 friends from so you'll go in the reject bin next to the guy who only smokes meth a few times a year and the chick who said something about menstrual empowerment.

With a name like SharpFang you're already halfway to failing the furry dogfucker test.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[i286NiNJA]

Don't fall for their trick. Citizen's United aren't a coalition of ordinary citizens. People's Choice aren't really the people's choice. National socialism isn't really socialism. Look past the name.

They fall for it because they want to fall for it.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

Oh. Ooozing tolerance, I see.

Diversity is the right thing, providing the composition of the diverse group matches the accepted profile. Blacks, Muslims, Transsexuals, Feminists, that's an acceptable mix. Different diversities are not acceptable. The rest is "privileged", and deserve to be oppressed.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

What are you even talking about?

It was the leftists groups that got played by Russians like a fiddle, as the article proves.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[i286NiNJA]

I never claimed to be the "tolerant left" I treat people decently and keep them at an arms length.
If I just met you and you start talking about power crystals in your ass or you keep mentioning the race of your neighbor when you tell me how much you don't like them, or maybe you think it's ok to invite me to your feltching workshop. Well you're probably not going to be in my circle of close friends but you're welcome to a doughnut if a bring some into work, it's fine to discriminate but not so good to discriminate against a person's innate characteristics.

It's nice that you allow fucked up people in your life indiscriminately it's very kind of you sir but being a furry you might not have much choice.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[eric_harris_76]

Dems, at the federal level at least, generally don't support gays blacks or whatever just because they want their vote, but because they think humans should be treated humanely

And you know this, how?

Where does one sign up for mind-reading lessons, anyway?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

It was the leftists groups that got played by Russians like a fiddle, as the article proves.

The irony is that you still think you weren't played as well.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[swb]

The other thought I had after posting this is there's maybe something about the distributed nature of US governance that makes "destabilization" almost impossible to really achieve much.

We can critique the level of democracy we have now, but until somebody starts openly advocating for the end of elections, dissolution of state governments and courts, etc, the system is kind of like an internetwork. It will just route around broken parts.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[Rakarra]

I don't think the Russians are "pushing for Trump" anymore, and I would be highly, highly skeptical that he's colluding with them in any way at this point.
What I was saying is the Russian propagandists have been sowing discord, any type. Anything that makes America look divided, whatever weakens the perception of the US's political on of the country's political stability.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

My point was rather that, if people are going the 'It's the Russians' fault', they clearly do not see the deeper issue, here. The USA have been steadily more and more polarized, long before Trump or this Russian sidetracking stuff. Even Europe gets more polarized, and it has nothing to do with Russians. It's simply the old divide between left and right that gets more and more pronounced, additionally flavored with progressive or conservative, libertarian or authoritarian, etc. Trump is only the latest prime example of a result of that, and the Russians a minor insignificant issue in it. If the Russians wouldn't have been there, sooner or later it would have resulted in such a thing anyway, if not with Trump, than with another. The appeal (and popularity) is getting more and more to the extremes, be it right, like with Trump, Andrzej Duda and others, or to the left, with Sanders, Corbyn, etc. (Hillary in this respect didn't score high with the grass-roots populace on either side). The Russians, in the bigger scheme of things, really don't matter. And even if one wants to focus on it, trivial as it might be, one can see in the comments it goes anyway one can imagine. Maybe they meddled, but did they meddle more than the USA did in other countries? (Russia has always blamed the USA of interference in the 'revolution' in the Ukraine, after all, and they may be right as well.) Maybe they didn't meddle. Maybe they have tr0lled in the 'pro-camp'. Maybe they have tr0lled in the 'against camp' to give it a backlash. (We see both claims being made in the posts here). Maybe they made some fake news to support Trump. Maybe they made fake news, so Trump could denounce it. Maybe the claims of fake news were fake news. Maybe the claims that the claim of fake news was fake news was fake news. Ad infinitum. Maybe Russian tr0lls are dividing Slashdot. Maybe that claim on itself is from a Russian troll, so he could stir up things. Or maybe no Russian tr0lls whatsoever are here... but just regular tr0lls? I don't know if I got my point across, but basically, with such wild claims one can go ANYWAY one want. Whether you're for, or against, whether the pro-Hillary crowd and leftists discredited themselves or not, or there are genuine supporters of Trump, or they're Russian puppets... one can claim whatever one wants, and one still claim it are the Russians or the exact reverse. It's a never ending wave of immer more absurd claims. If the left discredits oneself, they say it's a Russian troll.. simple, ain't it? Sure, the right does the same... but not with accusation of Russians, at least. And it doesn't even matter in the long run. People should focus on the real underlying problem, and finally get over the whole 'the Russians did it' meme. It's been going on for over a year now, and what has it accomplished, except more polarization? How long is it going to last? 8 years? 20? And every time a president is elected one doesn't like? And how is one going to prevent it? It's not illegal to pay politically active groups, after all, even if they are provocateurs. If I donate money to or against some group that support a president I like, is that illegal? And when I do the same but I live abroad, is it then illegal? If you want ones' populace to be less gullible, or don't vote for an idiot as president, the only solution is to educate them better. So start with the educational system. Don't concentrate on the ('Russian') symptoms, which are so vague they always lead to the same conclusion of the same disease, because one wishes to interpret it that way. Or else: yes, it's all the fault of the Russians, always. And now what?

Re: The key is not getting caught

[N3wsByt3]

My point was rather that, if people are going the 'It's the Russians' fault', they clearly do not see the deeper issue, here. The USA have been steadily more and more polarized, long before Trump or this Russian sidetracking stuff. Even Europe gets more polarized, and it has nothing to do with Russians. It's simply the old divide between left and right that gets more and more pronounced, additionally flavored with progressive or conservative, libertarian or authoritarian, etc. Trump is only the latest prime example of a result of that, and the Russians a minor insignificant issue in it. If the Russians wouldn't have been there, sooner or later it would have resulted in such a thing anyway, if not with Trump, than with another. The appeal (and popularity) is getting more and more to the extremes, be it right, like with Trump, Andrzej Duda and others, or to the left, with Sanders, Corbyn, etc. (Hillary in this respect didn't score high with the grass-roots populace on either side). The Russians, in the bigger scheme of things, really don't matter. And even if one wants to focus on it, trivial as it might be, one can see in the comments it goes anyway one can imagine. Maybe they meddled, but did they meddle more than the USA did in other countries? (Russia has always blamed the USA of interference in the 'revolution' in the Ukraine, after all, and they may be right as well.) Maybe they didn't meddle. Maybe they have tr0lled in the 'pro-camp'. Maybe they have tr0lled in the 'against camp' to give it a backlash. (We see both claims being made in the posts here). Maybe they made some fake news to support Trump. Maybe they made fake news, so Trump could denounce it. Maybe the claims of fake news were fake news. Maybe the claims that the claim of fake news was fake news was fake news. Ad infinitum. Maybe Russian tr0lls are dividing Slashdot. Maybe that claim on itself is from a Russian troll, so he could stir up things. Or maybe no Russian tr0lls whatsoever are here... but just regular tr0lls? I don't know if I got my point across, but basically, with such wild claims one can go ANYWAY one want. Whether you're for, or against, whether the pro-Hillary crowd and leftists discredited themselves or not, or there are genuine supporters of Trump, or they're Russian puppets... one can claim whatever one wants, and one still claim it are the Russians or the exact reverse. It's a never ending wave of immer more absurd claims. If the left discredits oneself, they say it's a Russian troll.. simple, ain't it? Sure, the right does the same... but not with accusation of Russians, at least. And it doesn't even matter in the long run. People should focus on the real underlying problem, and finally get over the whole 'the Russians did it' meme. It's been going on for over a year now, and what has it accomplished, except more polarization? How long is it going to last? 8 years? 20? And every time a president is elected one doesn't like? And how is one going to prevent it? It's not illegal to pay politically active groups, after all, even if they are provocateurs. If I donate money to or against some group that support a president I like, is that illegal? And when I do the same but I live abroad, is it then illegal? If you want ones' populace to be less gullible, or don't vote for an idiot as president, the only solution is to educate them better. So start with the educational system. Don't concentrate on the ('Russian') symptoms, which are so vague they always lead to the same conclusion of the same disease, because one wishes to interpret it that way. Or else: yes, it's all the fault of the Russians, always. And now what?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

I take it you are incapable of reading.
YOU said Hillary was for Black Lives Matter quoting the UK source
Well moron, did the article mention BLM?Liar

Re: The key is not getting caught

[SharpFang]

I know exactly where I'm standing. I know what trade-offs I made, who benefits from my stance - including who benefits from it even if I'd rather they didn't.

The radical left though, somehow believes it's only the blacks, the LGBT, the immigrants and the feminists who benefit from their activities. Somehow they completely lose sight of who benefits of America being split in twain by groups that violently oppose the democratically chosen government.

Re: The key is not getting caught

[tbannist]

The radical left though, somehow believes it's only the blacks, the LGBT, the immigrants and the feminists who benefit from their activities. Somehow they completely lose sight of who benefits of America being split in twain by groups that violently oppose the democratically chosen government.

And yet here you are splitting the country and blaming other people. Not into self-knowledge are you?

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Oh, I see, different thing you were objecting to:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-clinton-black-lives-matter-glanton-20160727-column.html/

I thought it was common knowledge that all Democrats were pro-cop-killer.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

Really?
Last I looked it was alt-right carrying out training on how to kill "State agents" when they come (for your guns of course)
What is NOT true is that Black Lives Matter is a cop killer organization
They ARE about justice meted out to cops. In court.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yeah, right, because Gavin Long was what, a judge in a court?

Face facts, Black Lives Matter doesn't trust cops and they certainly don't trust courts or judges. Haven't you heard? All white men are evil and need to be killed, from their point of view:
https://archive.org/details/youtube-iB5lirVJtwE

They're just another destructive leftest group- like EVERY OTHER left wing group of terrorists out there, including the alt-right, which is full of fiscal liberals and libertarians (thus, just more people believing in liberty- the right to harm others).

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

And not one single case of a BLM killing a cop.
Hmm, sounds like YOU have a comprehension problem.
Fortunately, not my problem.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Except of course for Gavin Long, who was a BLM terrorist.

Re:The key is not getting caught

[AutodidactLabrat]

Never was a member and LOATHED peaceful Protest.
Nice try.
But as always
A LIE!

Re:The key is not getting caught

[Marxist Hacker 42]

BLM has NEVER been about licensed, peaceful protest. Since Ferguson it's been about torching buildings, tearing down and defacing public property, stopping traffic on freeways and putting cops in danger.

That is the view most *sane* people have of BLM anyway; it's only liberal nuts who think torching buildings and tearing down statues is "peaceful protest".

Obama + Clinton Russian Collusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we even talking about a couple of Facebook ads when today's breaking news is the Obama administration was investigating Russian infiltration of the US nuclear material transport trucking company in 2009, by none other than Mueller of the FBI. It eventually led to corruption, money laundering, kickbacks and extortion charges. Yet somehow at the same time, a $500k speaking fee to Bill Clinton and $145mil being donated to the Clinton Foundation, with Hillary Clinton as sec of state let the same Russian group by Uranium One and 20% of the US uranium supply. Obama himself said that there was nothing to be concerned about, but we know now the investigation was blocked by none other than Comey, and Dept of Justice Holder And the Russian involved had a plea deal and covered it up in 2014.

Here's a joke for you

[Okian Warrior]

Not that Hilary is a spring chicken herself but it took a fundamental breakdown over just about everything to make a guy who used to be a Simpson's joke our actual president.

Here's a joke for you:

Q: How many reasons does Hillary have for not winning the election?

A: 43

Re:Here's a joke for you

[penandpaper]

Hillary was asked if Harvey Weinstein's behavior reminded her of her husband. She said "close but no cigar".

I'll let myself out now.

What is Slashdot coming to?

[Noamin]

It is absurd that RBC, which is now run by Putin loyalist and tabloid owner Grigory Berezkin, is being described as "a respected Russian news source". RBC USED to be a respected news source, until early 2016 when their reporting on government corruption got their leadership forcibly ousted and replaced with people that would play nice with the administration. There's probably some true information mixed into this story along with the falsehoods because that's how Russian intelligence generally operates, but to present what is straight-up Russian government-backed propaganda as journalism is, at very best, negligent to the point of maliciousness.

Re:What is Slashdot coming to?

[Shaix]

Yes because American sources are all propaganda free. Haven't you noticed a pattern of absolutely zero investigative journalism? All we ever get are news anchors (talking heads) talking to so called "experts" who either work for the US Government or work for an organization that receives funding or is owned by the US Government. By that definition alone, you are being fed American government propaganda, and you happily accept it. Ask your self this, where are American investigative journalists in Syria? We had them in Iraq and Afghanistan, but all we get are "experts" in Syria. How come there are UK, Canadian and French and many other journalists in Syria, but US media never talks with them??? Same with the Russian nonsense. We're 10 months into the 'Russia collusion' investigation and their bombshell proof is that some Russians bought ads on Facebook & Google. That‘s not surprising. "Russiagate" is the 2017 version of the great Iraqi WMDs hoax. The reports in neocon propaganda sheets follow exactly the same pattern as they did fifteen years ago — sensationalist headlines with unnamed "sources" telling us some pretty shocking things — but without any actual hard evidence ever being produced. Then, as now, it's a case of "we've got the proof, loads of it, but we can't show it to you, and you must believe us that it's there." The image of Colin Powell holding up that vial at the UN springs readily to mind.

Re:What is Slashdot coming to?

[guacamole]

Quite sadly we don't have much independent, honest, and unbiased news outlets any more. CNN is the scariest and most deceiving, but Fox and MSNBC are close to it. Washington Post is now a complete joke, a platform for the neocons and liberals to trash the Trump administration. When I want to see what goes on in the world, I gotta watch BBC or Al Jazeera (and the funny thing is that these two state owned tv networks deliver certainly far more truth than American cable news or papers).

Re:What is Slashdot coming to?

[cmseagle]

I don't know anything about RBC, but if's wrong to call the "respected," blame The Guardian, not Slashdot.
The first paragraph of The Guardian article linked from the summary refers to RBC as a "respected Russian media outlet."

WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

I quit reading when I got to the "respected Russian news source"

Re:WTF

[Q-Hack!]

There does seem to be a bit of circular reasoning behind this story.

Re:WTF

[guacamole]

Sounds like you have no idea about Russian sources of news. Why don't you learn something before spewing ignorant russophibic drivel?

Russia has far more freedom of speech than say China and it has a few very respected news sources. The way it works in Russia, if say under 2% of population reads the source, Putin's administration usually does not consider it as a threat and leaves it alone. They did shut down or take over any big independent TV channels and newspapers.

When is hillary getting charged for colluding with

[Anonymous Coward]

Because after a year of the nothing burger investigation of Trump we now finally know mueller has been looking in the wrong place and almost certainly knew it.

Laws are for little people

[Okian Warrior]

Why are we even talking about a couple of Facebook ads when today's breaking news is the Obama administration was investigating Russian infiltration of the US nuclear material transport trucking company in 2009, by none other than Mueller of the FBI. It eventually led to corruption, money laundering, kickbacks and extortion charges. Yet somehow at the same time, a $500k speaking fee to Bill Clinton and $145mil being donated to the Clinton Foundation, with Hillary Clinton as sec of state let the same Russian group by Uranium One and 20% of the US uranium supply. Obama himself said that there was nothing to be concerned about, but we know now the investigation was blocked by none other than Comey, and Dept of Justice Holder And the Russian involved had a plea deal and covered it up in 2014.

Dearie, don't you understand? Laws are for little people.

James Comey can admit to leaking, and gets to write a book about it.

Reality Winner can admit to leaking, and gets to sit in prison, denied bail.

Re:Laws are for little people

[RazorSharp]

Leaking embarrassing information about the president and leaking classified information are not the same things.

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[Trailer Trash]

Some of them *did* learn. Ever heard of President Trump?

Timeline of Treason

[Anonymous Coward]

Before the Election

Dec. 10, 2015
Lt. Gen Michael Flynn is part of a panel discussion in Moscow for the 10th anniversary of government-backed Russia Today, for which he receives payment (The Washington Post, Aug. 15, 2016). Officials notice an increase in communication between Flynn and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, following the Russia Today event (CNN, May 19, 2017).

Late 2015
British intelligence agencies detect suspicious interactions between Russia and Trump aides that they pass on to American intelligence agencies (The Guardian, April 13, 2017).

March 19, 2016
Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is sent an email that encourages him to change his email password, likely precipitating the hack of his account (CBS News, Oct. 28, 2016).

March 21
During an interview with The Post, Trump lists Carter Page as part of his foreign policy team. Page had been recommended by a son-in-law of President Richard Nixon, New York Republican Party Chairman Ed Cox (WP, March 21, 2016).

March 28
Political veteran Paul Manafort is hired to help the Trump campaign manage the delegate process for the Republican National Convention. He is recommended by Trump confidante Roger Stone (New York Times, March 28, 2016). Before joining the campaign, Manafort lobbied on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. That deal followed a memo from Manafort in which he offered a plan that could "greatly benefit the Putin Government." His relationship with Deripaska ended in 2009 (Associated Press, March 22, 2017). Manafort also worked on behalf of the Russia-friendly Party of Regions in Ukraine, helping guide the party's leader, Viktor Yanukovych, to the country's presidency. Yanukovych would later be ousted. (WP, Aug. 19, 2016)

April 27
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) may have met with Kislyak at a reception at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington before a foreign-policy speech given by Trump (CNN, May 31, 2017).

June
At a closed-door meeting of foreign policy experts and the prime minister of India, Page praises Putin effusively (WP, Aug. 5, 2016).

June 9
Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort and son-in-law Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya. Veselnitskaya's efforts to reverse a law passed in 2012 sanctioning Russians suspected of human rights violations at some point drew the attention of the FBI. The meeting was not initially reported to the government by Kushner as required when he took a position with the administration (Times, July 8, 2017). After the meeting was originally reported, Trump, Jr. admitted that the pretext for the conversation was that he believed Veselnitskaya to have information incriminating Hillary Clinton (Times, July 9, 2017).

June 15
A hacker calling himself "Guccifer 2.0" releases the Democratic National Committee's research file on Donald Trump (Gawker, June 15, 2016). News reports already link the stolen data to Russian hackers (WP, June 14, 2016).

July
At some point this month, the FBI begins investigating possible links between the Russian government and Trump's campaign (Wired, March 20, 2017).

July 7
Page travels to Moscow to give a lecture (NYT, April 19, 2017). The Trump campaign approved the trip (USA Today, March 7, 2017). This trip was likely the catalyst for the FBI's request for a secret surveillance warrant to track PageÃs communications (WP, May 25, 2017).

July 11 or 12
Trump campaign staffers intervene with the committee developing the Republican Party's national security platform to remove language call arming Ukraine against Russian aggression. (July 18, 2016).

July 18
At an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation as part of the Republican National Convention, Sessions and Kislyak have a brief conversation (WP, March 2, 2017).

Flynn delivers a speech at the Republican convention, joining in the crowd's "Lock her up!" chant. "If I, a guy who knows this business, if I

Re:Timeline of Treason

[guacamole]

Treason? Most of this looks like routine diplomatic communication, lobbing, etc.

Re:Timeline of Treason

[nospam007]

"Treason? Most of this looks like routine diplomatic communication, lobbing, etc."

It's only 'diplomacy' if you're already elected, before, its also a crime, albeit still another different one than treason.

Re:Timeline of Treason

[BrookHarty]

>citation provided [washingtonpost.com]

And proves how far WAPO fell, this reads more like a 4chan shit post.
Timeline includes tweets, he said she said arguments, innuendo, then tries to rope in wikileaks and guccifier.

Proof need more than "he spoke to someone". I read the whole thing looking for an actual crime, other than a list of unrelated events.

Slashdot moderation is best moderation!

[Okian Warrior]

Why are we even talking about a couple of Facebook ads when today's breaking news is the Obama administration was investigating Russian infiltration of the US nuclear material transport trucking company in 2009, by none other than Mueller of the FBI.

Fascinating to watch the Slashdot moderation system in action.

As I post this, there are three topically relevant and accurate stories modded down to 0 or -1. The one above this one reads "0 interesting", the "interesting" tag gets added for an upvote.

This one (and the others) are perfectly legitimate: Both news stories are in the current news cycle, and are largely what the writers say they are. (Clinton Uranium deal investigated by the FBI, and Comey wrote the Hillary conclusion months before interviewing Hillary.)

I have faith that the number of people with integrity far outweigh the trolls on this board.

We're the smart people in the room, the ones that others *should* look up to.

If we can't abide the truth, then we're no different from the media talking heads.

Re:Slashdot moderation is best moderation!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to be upvoted for whataboutism, which is almost by definition off-topic anyway, then it might help to include a link or citation so we can see what the fuck you're ranting about.

The purpose of the Slashdot moderation system is to help the signal rise above the noise. The GP post is the epitome of "noise". It's off-topic, unsourced and unverifiable.

Re:Slashdot moderation is best moderation!

[Anonymous Coward]

> (Clinton Uranium deal investigated by the FBI,

No. And shame on you for lying about it.

It was not the "clinton uranium deal" that was investigated. It was a bunch of russians doing kickbacks and money laundering, going as far back as 2004. As for Clinton's involvement, this is what the article says:

Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation,

The millions went to a company that also worked with the clinton foundation, but note that the article explicitly avoids saying the millions were passed through to the foundation rather than being spent elsewhere, like aforementioned kickbacks to russians.

Furthermore, whenever the Uranium One deal is mentiond, everybody should remember this key fact: Russia was never given an export license, thus the uranium could never leave the US (and in fact barely any of it even left the ground because importing uranium from abroad is cheaper than mining it here). Here's the official statement from the Nuclear Regulatory Agency:

Neither Uranium One nor ARMZ holds an NRC export license, so no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.

> and Comey wrote the Hillary conclusion months before interviewing Hillary.)

Another half-truth that is a full lie. Interviewing her was basically a formality, especially if you believe the narrative that she's a master manipulator. The FBI investigation began no later than August the year before, 9 months before Comey began drafting the statement. All of the evidence gathered by then was already exculpatory that the writing was already on the wall.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/31/politics/comey-clinton-investigation/index.html
A person familiar with the matter pushed back on the notion that Comey had already reached a conclusion that affected the investigation.
The person said back in spring 2016, agents and Justice Department officials were talking about how the investigation would end and there was a belief that the evidence was going in a direction to not support bringing charges. This individual said by April 2016 the FBI had reviewed most of the evidence and didn't find evidence suggesting that Clinton had violated federal law. The person said the FBI wanted to interview her but didn't believe it was going to change the outcome.
The source also said Comey was not involved in the day-to-day steps of the investigation, so even if he reached a conclusion it wouldn't have affected the result of the investigation.
A second person familiar with the matter told CNN that Comey had not already made up his mind, and that it did not influence the investigation. The second source says the FBI had already reviewed much of the evidence by spring and it was becoming more clear that it was not likely to support bringing charges.

> If we can't abide the truth, then we're no different from the media talking heads.

You are different from the media talking heads. You are an unabashedly hyperpartisan liar, they are just poorly informed. You, on the other hand, know the whole truth because it takes exceptional discipline to write out all the parts that don't support your ideology of idiocy.

Re:Slashdot moderation is best moderation!

[Noishkel]

Call it off topic but there's a little PAC by the name of 'Correct The Record' that the Clinton Campaign tried to use to 'correct the record' by hiring paid shills to basically troll and disrupt pro Trump social media campaigns. Supposedly the spent an even $1,000,000 on trying to do this.

But remember, be really upset that someone in the Russian Federal dropped $80K.

Re:Slashdot moderation is best moderation!

[Gravis Zero]

As I post this, there are three topically relevant and accurate stories modded down to 0 or -1.

What do those posts have to do with the Russian interference in US elections? That is the topic.

This one (and the others) are perfectly legitimate

If they are legitimate then please submit a story citing a reputable source. They sound like stories that would leave a trail for investigative journalists to follow but all that's being posted are intangible conspiracy theories.

Re:Slashdot moderation is best moderation!

[HornWumpus]

Good job 'correcting the record'. Shill.

Re:Slashdot moderation is best moderation!

[Kogun]

Thanks for attempting to Correct the Record, there, AC, but you left out this bit about the Clintons from The Hill article:

"They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill."

and that helps to put the bit you tried to quote in a fuller context. So here's the full paragraph you butchered:

"The final court case also made no mention of any connection to the influence peddling conversations the FBI undercover informant witnessed about the Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation, sources confirmed to The Hill."

I'd say your redactions paint a different picture than what the thrust of the article was about.

United we stand, divided we fall

[Gussington]

Ask yourself, is what I'm hearing designed to unite or divide? You then have your answer to who the real enemy is.

so...

[doctorvo]

RBC counted 16 groups relating to the Black Lives Matter campaign and other race issues that had a total of 1.2 million subscribers. The biggest group was entitled Blacktivist and reportedly had more than 350,000 likes at its peak.

Russia paying money to leftist and progressive groups in the US in order to create dissent and foment violence has been going on for more than half a century, as has their placement of operatives in Washington. That makes Democratic complaints about supposed Trump-Russia ties so ludicrous.

In other news, turns out there is more to the Russia-Clinton-Uranium story.

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

McCarthy was right.

Re:so...

[AmiMoJo]

According to TFA they were not targeting "leftists", just anyone they thought might be divisive. That includes the Texas independence movement, and of course the California succession one (#calexit). And of course we know that they were supporting the Republican campaign at the time.

When you try to tie it to "leftists" it makes me wonder if you are a paid Russian troll trying to seed dissent.

Re:so...

[houghi]

It is sweat that you think this was either for one party or against the other party. It isn't. It is to put some serious shit between people in the US.

The Romans already know how to do it : Divide and conquer

And they are really good at it, because you start pointing at Clinton, the others start pointing at Trump and the Russians stand on the side and laughing their asses off.

Re:so...

[Solandri]

That's what I don't get about the press coverage about all this. Russia pays for ads supporting white supremacists and somehow that's part of a conspiracy to get Trump elected. Russia pays for ads supporting BLM and somehow that's also part of a conspiracy to get Trump elected. A 5-year old can spot the problem with the reasoning here.

Historically, elections with higher voter turnout have favored the Democrats. So any apolitical "divisive" ad campaign which enraged more people into voting should actually have had the net effect of helping Democrats to win (i.e. a greater percentage of the enraged Republicans were already going to vote anyway). So either this was a Russian operation to try to get Clinton elected, or it was a Russian operation that had nothing to do with the election.

Along the same lines, Clinton lost because she was a lackluster candidate who couldn't convince enough Democrats to come to the polls and vote. That's how pretty much every election I've taken part in (30 years) has gone. There are substantially fewer registered Republicans than registered Democrats, but a greater percentage of Republicans show up to vote every election. If the Democrats choose a popular (or at least not-unpopular) candidate who can excite an above average percentage of Democrats to bother to vote, the Democrats win. If they choose a lackluster candidate, the Democrats lose.

Re:so...

[doctorvo]

That includes the Texas independence movement, and of course the California succession one (#calexit).

And those are conservative or Republican... how?

And of course we know that they were supporting the Republican campaign at the time.When you try to tie it to "leftists" it makes me wonder if you are a paid Russian troll trying to seed dissent.

You need to seek professional help: you obviously suffer from paranoid delusions.

Re:so...

[doctorvo]

It is sweat that you think this was either for one party or against the other party. It isn't. It is to put some serious shit between people in the US

Americans have traditionally been small government, classically liberal free market types with generally protestant culture, values, and work ethic. Historically, both parties broadly supported such views. What has changed is that the Democrats have been taken over by progressive, neo-Marxist, and social justice ideology; that is what has created the division. Many of Trump's positions and statements that Democrats denounce as extreme right wing are positions that would have been perfectly fine for Bill Clinton to take (in fact, he did take many of the same positions). So, Russia didn't have to support both sides equally; they simply needed to create and nurture an opposition to traditional US mainstream culture. That is exactly what the progressives and social justice movement represent: a rejection of protestant culture, values, and work ethic, and a demonization of the people most identified with it, namely white males. This started half a century ago, but it finally took over the Democratic party some time in the post-Clinton era.

And they are really good at it

Much as I would like to believe that Russia is the root cause of the idiocy that has taken a hold of the Democratic party, it is only a minor factor. A lot of our current divisiveness is the result of European intellectuals invading American universities since the 1930's and bringing their hare-brained theories with them. And a lot of our current divisiveness represents rational behavior for our politicians, given the reward structure of our bloated federal government.

Re:so...

[stdarg]

So what? If someone exposes divisions that doesn't make them fake divisions. I don't understand the whole anti-Russia thing, but then again I'm also pro-Wikileaks and I thought Cablegate was one of the greatest things that has ever happened on the internet.

What is the point of protests?

[irrational_design]

I've always wondered what the point of protests are. Unless something dramatic happens (e.g., someone getting killed), no one remembers the protest a week later. Its as if it never happened. If the point of protests is to get people on their side, that often backfires. Where I live there were a lot of protests after Trump was elected. They would block roads and highways at rush hour which made everyone's commutes longer. That didn't exactly engender sympathy towards their cause. If that point is to get the powers that be to change their mind - that is incredibly naive. Only money/lobbyists and possibly a threat to their reelection can do that.

But, now I have my answer! Like so many things in life, the answer is to follow the money. The Russians were funding the protests. It all makes sense now.

Re:What is the point of protests?

[AmiMoJo]

People remember the anti-Trump protests just after he was elected. Along with the lies about the size of his inauguration crowd, they became iconic and the hallmarks of his election victory. They really were exceptional - there is always some dissent when new presidents come in, but the shear scale of those protests and the fact that they dwarfed the inauguration itself will always be remembered.

As for the point, it's not just to change people's minds. It's to demonstrate that the other narrative, in that case Trump's claim to be extremely popular and well liked, is false. It's an expression of their strong feelings on the matter. You might as well say that speech is pointless because it often doesn't change people's minds immediately, but I think most people accept that's now how things works.

Re:What is the point of protests?

[irrational_design]

People don't remember the anti-Trump protests, or even if they remember them, they never think about them or bring the remembrance to the forefront of their brains. People have lives, jobs, kids, hobbies, etc. They were not exceptional enough for anyone to think about even a few days after they occurred. The fact that you think that they were so exceptional that people still remember them says a lot about the bubble you live in.

What is the point of "demonstrat[ing] that the other narrative is false"? Those who believed it was false already believed it before the protests. Those who didn't believe it still didn't believe it after the protests. It had not affect then and still has not affect today. It was a useless gesture that solved nothing and improved nothing.

Just think, if all the people who participated in the protests took the money they would have spent traveling to the protest area, spent on housing, would have earned at a job during that time, etc. And gave it to a non-profit or some other organization opposed to Trump - that would have been huge and made a real lasting impact. Money talks and that would have been far louder than any group of people shouting.

Russia has been doing this for decades

[LaughingRadish]

This is nothing new. Russia has had a habit of starting politically-motivated dissent and riots in other countries since the 1920s. They're not interested in who wins. They just want to cause chaos and to control whoever is left standing.

Re:Russia has been doing this for decades

[guacamole]

Russia has had a habit o

Wow, another slashdot "Russia expert" whose basis of expertise is based only on very basic stereotypes and memes?. Why don't you learn something before posting this drivel on a public forum?

For one, there was no such county in the 1920s, and in fact until 1991. There was USSR.

They're not interested in who wins. They just want to cause chaos and to control whoever is left standing.

Second, USSR sponsored specifically communist and socialist dissent in many countries specifically for the purpose of fomenting a communist revolution. So there was clearly an ideologically driven goal to their meddling in other counties.

Re:Russia has been doing this for decades

[Zontar The Mindless]

Calling a hot dog a sausage doesn't make any difference in the flavour.

Re:Genuine

[sexconker]

They're "genuine" because they were for hate groups the left likes.

Fruit of the poison tree

[Okian Warrior]

The Russians were funding the protests. It all makes sense now.

I don't think people have quite realized the impact this new revelation has.

True or false, big [effect] or little, this revelation will taint all future protests.

The protests have just lost a fuckton of credibility, because now this will be raised as the reason people are protesting.

For all future protests.

And some previous protestors will come to examine their beliefs, saying "did I really believe that, or was I egged on"?

Future protests will be painted "fruit of the poison tree" with this new revelation.

Re:Fruit of the poison tree

[irrational_design]

Not only protests. Now when I read something in a forum that is divisive I think, "Russian Troll Farm for sure". How would anyone prove that they really aren't working for a Russian Troll Farm?

Get in line

[Tablizer]

What, they outbid Israel?

Re:With eyes we see, with blindfolds we fall.

[king neckbeard]

The real question is what the most effective tactics at combating such efforts are. One of the stated goals of these Russian plots is to undermine America's faith in their democracy and government. Nothing would foil that plan as effectively as actually having an effective democracy with trustworthy elected officials that actually represent the people's interest and respect their rights.

Not exactly

[rsilvergun]

Here's the reasons (most to least):

1. Arrogance. She didn't think she had to campaign in the swing states. She actually believed in that "blue firewall" nonsense.

2. Trump's billions of dollars in free media coverage. Nobody in the press would denounce him because they were getting too many hits.

3. Russia. Russia. Russia. (insert Brady Bunch joke here). We had an ex-KGB pro with the full backing of his nation throw his hat in the ring for Trump.

4. Her health. She really was too old for this shit.

5. 30 years of bad press. Not just the emails. Everything. The Republicans knew she was going to run for president at some point. They have a multi-billion dollar media machine dedicated to their cause (Fox, Beitbart, all of Koch media, etc, etc). They've been hammering away at her since her husband left office.

6. TPP. Crap deal for everyone except the ruling class. In an election about jobs that hurt a lot.

7. Warmongering. In an effort to show everyone that a woman could be "strong" she went around the world pissing off our allies. A lot of folks figured she'd get us in a war. Meanwhile Trump was saying he wouldn't do that. Jokes on them, he's already got us on the brink of two new wars (to add to the 7 we're already fighting, look it up).

That's about it. Folks mostly agreed with her on everything except the TPP because most Americans are genuinely conservative. e.g. they don't want much change except maybe some more help from the government (for them only of course, not those lazy Blacks^X Welfare slobs). She's a right of center moderate. Exactly what most voters wanted.

Re:Not exactly

[fahrbot-bot]

4. Her health. She really was too old for this shit.

Seriously? Hillary is 69 and Trump is 71 - and he's pretty out of shape.

Re:Not exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump isn't cancelling interviews because he stubbed his toe. Nor is he getting chucked into a van like a side of beef. Or spacing out in mini-seizures.

Like it or not, Trump's in far, far better condition than Clinton.

Re:Not exactly

[Gussington]

1. Arrogance. She didn't think she had to campaign in the swing states. She actually believed in that "blue firewall" nonsense.

This is 99% of it. Not campaigning in swing states is pretty amateur stuff.

2. Trump's billions of dollars in free media coverage. Nobody in the press would denounce him because they were getting too many hits.

He got denounced plenty, but the stupid vote doesn't care for such things.

3. Russia. Russia. Russia. (insert Brady Bunch joke here). We had an ex-KGB pro with the full backing of his nation throw his hat in the ring for Trump.

This is less a Hillary thing and more a general threat that still isn't getting the coverage it deserves. Russia has been playing this game for decades. I recall a thing I saw years ago how the Soviets were pumping millions into the hippy protests in the 60's in an effort to disrupt and divide. This will continue way past this election unless something is done.

4. Her health. She really was too old for this shit.

No worse than Trump, or Bush snr, or Reagan etc. Plenty of old retards in politics.

5. 30 years of bad press. Not just the emails. Everything. The Republicans knew she was going to run for president at some point. They have a multi-billion dollar media machine dedicated to their cause (Fox, Beitbart, all of Koch media, etc, etc). They've been hammering away at her since her husband left office.

And she still could've won which shows how pointless that effort was.

6. TPP. Crap deal for everyone except the ruling class. In an election about jobs that hurt a lot.

I find it hard to see how anyone can call this either way. If there's one thing we know about economics it's that economists get it wrong most of the time. Tossing a coin is equally valid in predicting such things, so I take it with a grain of salt when anyone claims to know how that would play out exactly.

7. Warmongering. In an effort to show everyone that a woman could be "strong" she went around the world pissing off our allies. A lot of folks figured she'd get us in a war. Meanwhile Trump was saying he wouldn't do that. Jokes on them, he's already got us on the brink of two new wars (to add to the 7 we're already fighting, look it up).

This is one I didn't get. Hillary was warmongery for a Dem, but she was still less warmongery than any Rep POTUS in 40 years.

That's about it. Folks mostly agreed with her on everything except the TPP because most Americans are genuinely conservative. e.g. they don't want much change except maybe some more help from the government (for them only of course, not those lazy Blacks^X Welfare slobs). She's a right of center moderate. Exactly what most voters wanted.

TPP seemed to be used by luddites who think they can wish globalisation away. The genie can't be put back in the bottle, technological advances in transport and communication networks make this impossible to reverse. So you may as well accept there'll be massive changes to our way of life and try and deal with it with a forward thinking leader, rather than an orange man-baby clown...

Re:Not exactly

[Bartles]

Don't forget the coughing. So much coughing.

Re:Not exactly

[Maritz]

They are leveraging facebook to fuck with your social cohesion. It's working an absolute fucking treat.

Re:Not exactly

[drinkypoo]

Trump isn't cancelling interviews because he stubbed his toe. Nor is he getting chucked into a van like a side of beef. Or spacing out in mini-seizures.

Explain covfefe

Re:Not exactly

[cascadingstylesheet]

2. Trump's billions of dollars in free media coverage. Nobody in the press would denounce him because they were getting too many hits.

Which press were you reading?

The mainstream press portrayed him as some sort of wacky clown, when they weren't portraying him as some kind of sinister mastermind. He was denounced so often that you'd think they would sprain their denouncers.

Sure, they enjoyed the hits, but the hits were (they thought) for "what crazy evil thing did he do now"?

Re:Not exactly

[Curunir_wolf]

And of course, it is not as if the U.S. isn't doing exactly the same thing. Sponsoring pro-US politicians/movements in other countries in the hope of favourable outcome.

And if that doesn't work, we sponsor rebels and arm them with weapons to take out the government by force. i.e. Afghanistan in the 1980's, Libya, Syria (throw in some false flag gas attacks), Iran will be next.

Plan was laid out years ago.

Re:Not exactly

[pipingguy]

But Trump didn't have Fally-Downy syndrome.

Re:Not exactly

[painandgreed]

Trump isn't cancelling interviews because he stubbed his toe. Nor is he getting chucked into a van like a side of beef. Or spacing out in mini-seizures.

Explain covfefe

Syphilitic dementia.

Re:Not exactly

[ScentCone]

Shall we go through just this web site alone and compile your typos and half-baked sentences? No, because that wouldn't be a fair representation of your cognitive skills? I see.

Re:Not exactly

[drinkypoo]

Syphilitic dementia.

I was going with [frosted] mini-seizures, but that shoe fits at least as well.

Re:Not exactly

[Kogun]

Who is "they", exactly? Do you mean the Russians? Their efforts are mere molecule in a sea of US sponsored astro-turfing and social manipulation.

Have a look at the research efforts at IARPA (IARPA Research).
Then consider the solicitation by the US Air Force for an application that facilitates astro-turfing. (Online Persona Management Service)

Finally, consider the "modernization" of the Smith-Mundt act, (National Defense Authorization Act) and I ask, again, who is "they"?

Re:Not exactly

[greythax]

Throwing out paper towels to victims of a hurricane like they were t-shirts at a basketball game, saying he met with the president of the virgin islands when he IS the president of the virgin islands, PAINTING HIS FACE ORANGE FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.

In all fairness, he portrays HIMSELF as a wacky clown.

Re:Not exactly

[fahrbot-bot]

But Trump didn't have Fally-Downy syndrome.

Uh huh. Even *if* that was/is a persistent problem, you realize that President Roosevelt had polio and spent most of his time confined to a wheelchair. But maybe you prefer a President, like Trump, who has spent 25% of his days in office golfing (69/271 days) at a taxpayer cost of at least $74M and has otherwise gotten nothing done - though, to be fair, I'm not sure that Hillary could get anything done with the Republican-controlled Congress we have.

Not meaning to engage in an argument, going back to the original post/complaint, perhaps neither candidate is in great shape, even for their ages, but Hillary simply being too "old" when Trump is older is a stupid argument to make against her.

Re:Not exactly

[drinkypoo]

I will put my Slashdot history up against Trump's twitter history any day of the week, so long as we make sure to pair his anti-Obama tweets with his tweets defending himself doing exactly the same thing now

Re:Not exactly

[pipingguy]

Attempting to equate someone needing to use a wheelchair with someone else who falls down repeatedly. Well done.

On the other hand, perhaps Madame ex-Secretary should could have used one as a sympathy prop.

Re:Not exactly

[fahrbot-bot]

Attempting to equate someone needing to use a wheelchair with someone else who falls down repeatedly. Well done. On the other hand, perhaps Madame ex-Secretary should could have used one as a sympathy prop.

Or, perhaps, the point is that a physical disability (if it exists) doesn't disqualify someone from being President. But, well done on your discrimination - have fun getting old, especially in the days of Trump and the Republicans.

Re:Not exactly

[Gussington]

And of course, it is not as if the U.S. isn't doing exactly the same thing. Sponsoring pro-US politicians/movements in other countries in the hope of favourable outcome.

And if that doesn't work, we sponsor rebels and arm them with weapons to take out the government by force.

I have no problem with this. You can't expect that by playing nice your enemies will too. National Security is actually a thing. Where I have a problem is when everyone involved calls out a potential threat and the guy at top ignores it without any justification at all. That negligence is bordering on treason.

Divide and conquer

[Anonymous Coward]

RBC here, can simply be admitting to something before the real press get their teeth into the story, diffusing it ahead of time. Perhaps seeding it with a few misleading items, that can be debunked easily in order to try to get the whole story debunked.

They really want to divide the USA to weaken it. El Trumpo too, endlessly choosing divisive choices designed to set American against American. If you watch the theme videos, they're American (group 1) attacks American (group 2). The basis of selection changes, but the divide idea stays there.

If you recall, the Putin plan changed to "discredit the election" when they thought Trump would lose, and Trump and Fox talking heads started calling the election rigged. The way you can turn on RT, and switch to Fox News and the narrative is sooooo similar. I thought it would change with Trump in the WH, and that it was only that both Putin and Fox were attacking Obama and feeding off each others talking points, but even now Fox, Trump. and Russia all doing the "deep state" claims.

The overlap between media at the conservative fringes and Putin's propaganda men, is so wide now. They don't really know if its *their* group's own fake video or Putins groups fake video.

Curiously...

[argStyopa]

...none of them had an agenda to support Trump.

One might almost believe that narrative was...fake news?

The Guardian article mentions that basically their efforts were to show division, not particularly meddle in the election. Their funding supported mainly Texas independence (ludicrous), gun rights, and racial issues, particularly black lives matter protests. This is pretty much what Russian Intel has done for years; the history of kgb funding for anti American, labor, and leftist movements in Europe and the USA has been well documented historically.

The notion that they put $80k into this just suggests how little they expected of it.

Re:Curiously...

[argStyopa]

Amusingly, they probably appreciate Ms Clinton's campaign giving theirs far greater reach and staying power in the media dialogue. Ha ha...irony.

Re:Curiously...

[sysrammer]

I had thought that $80k was fairly minor, too. But for small operations it makes an op possible. Still, I'm thinking this is the tip of the iceberg.

Re:Curiously...

[drinkypoo]

...none of them had an agenda to support Trump.

Supporting Trump is obvious, attacking his opponents is almost as obvious, supporting his opponents in ways that make them look like assholes is far less obvious.

The notion that they put $80k into this just suggests how little they expected of it.

It shows just how fucked America is right now economically that a mere $80k will buy you that much agitation.

Re:Curiously...

[AmiMoJo]

It was all in support of Trump. Trump stood on a platform of blame (the political elite, immigrants, the Chinese etc.) and was supported by the growing alt-right movement. Creating dissent helped Trump, because his campaign was built on those feelings.

Re:Curiously...

[argStyopa]

I say "I'm not sure global warming is real" and get modded -4, Troll.

^this comment like the above, ends up at 0 or 1. Yay, slashdot.

And the the previous poster: "Listen, asshole: the RUSSIAN ASSHOLES have been 'fucking around in our country and elections since 1917. Maybe you can figure out why it started then by yourself?

And if I'd known what frothing histrionics it would send people like you into, I'd cheerfully have voted for him, yes.

A cry for help?

[Brett Buck]

What sort of idiot wastes their time with this, given that *none* of it is in any way incriminating nor does it show *any* evidence of actual collusion?

Re:A cry for help?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people actually read and understand this timeline of the documented evidence of treason that Trump committed in colluding with Russia's attack on America.

Considering that Russia's attack on America is actually still continuing, and that Moscow Donald is still treasonous covering it up and refusing to defend us, it's important to resist this treasonous coup and defend our country.

Re:A cry for help?

[Brett Buck]

OK, thanks, I think that answers my question.

Re:A cry for help?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it shows evidence of idiocy by hiring and working with compromised people that were being paid by Russian interests to drop the sanctions.

Trump didn't want a scandal and tried to bury it, obstructing justice.

I believe it was more out of ego and anything else. He didn't want the aura of Russian interference to diminish the size of his grand victory.

His reasons as really irrelevant.

Re: Bulletin Board of Trump / Russia Treason

[Anonymous Coward]

On June 3 last year, Donald Trump Jr. received an email offering him "official documents" containing what was described as "very high level and sensitive information" from Russia's chief prosecutor that would "incriminate" Hillary Clinton and which was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr.'s response: "if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer." Days later, the now famous meeting in Trump Tower followed.

What is plain as day from Trump Jr.'s own words is that he hoped - gleefully- to acquire dirt to use against Hillary Clinton by meeting with someone identified to him in the email chain as a "Russian government attorney." What is also plain as day - and should have been obvious to any sentient American, including Trump Jr., and fellow meeting attendees campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner - is that if the Russian government possessed such dirt, it either came from or could have come from the Russian intelligence services and was being dangled before them by the Russian government to advance Russian purposes.

To spell it out a bit more, interference of any sort by any foreign country in our elections is never acceptable. But Russia is not just any foreign country. It is a hostile power with a long history of spying on the United States and also attempting to influence our politics by both overt and covert means. Any derogatory material on Hillary Clinton which the Russians possessed might have been obtained by the dark arts of espionage: by blackmailing one or more of her associates, by planting moles in her entourage, and/or by intercepting her and her associates' telephone calls and (as actually happened) hacking their emails.

Citation Provided is an opinion article, but the section I've quoted is based directly on legitimate news articles I'm too lazy to dig up.

Re:Mitrokhin referred to this...

[doctorvo]

To his credit, MLK rejected the Soviet funds and refused to work with them

Of course not all of the civil rights movement was controlled by the Soviet Union/Russia; much of it was motivated by a desire for justice and equality.

Unfortunately, Soviet/Russian influence has seriously damaged the movement (and hurt African Americans) by turning the movement from liberal objectives to a movement that is about government handouts, externalizing blame, and perpetual grievances.

$80k is indeed nothing for media buys.

[jbn-o]

Russiagate is becoming ever more desperate and obvious. The previous Russiagate lie had a slightly higher figure spent on Facebook ($100k) and even that amount is laughable; the corporate parties spend orders of magnitude more on media buys to get the public's attention and steer American voters toward voting for their electors. $80k spent doesn't deserve anything but a laugh at someone's attempt to excuse Hillary Clinton from her horrible politics, twice-demonstrated incompetence at heading a political campaign (losing to a then-unknown upstart Senator, then the candidate the mainstream corporate media wouldn't stop making fun of), and continued self-embarrassment in her comments about Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual abuses.

I thought /. focused on repeating corporate media's IT-oriented lies (endless supportive coverage of proprietary software despite countless stories revealing the same truth: software freedom would have prevented that issue, or software freedom would have let people fix their own instance of $IoTobject). Now /. is getting uncritically into Russiagate? A story that has shown time and again the mainstream American corporate media has no time for facts? /. you're increasingly worthless.

Re:$80k is indeed nothing for media buys.

[HornWumpus]

There are no viable left wing candidates.

Trump is hoping the Ds pivot left.

Re:$80k is indeed nothing for media buys.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Heck, McDonald's spends more a a day's worth of TV Adverts.

Oh here we go again, let me point this out

[AbRASiON]

Key things to note in the headline:

**Russian** Troll Factory Paid US Activists To Fund Protests During Election (***theguardian.com***) ----

That's all you need to know.
Before you say it, I'm not right wing, I'm not even American.

The slant from theguardian and several others media outlets has gone full tilt left, not just slightly left, which for the most part I agree with but just left to the point of ridiculousness.

I love how one of the arguments of the election was "hacking! the Russians hacked, the whole election is a fraud!!" //EVEN IF// that was true, even if! The Russians supposedly didn't hack the election, what they /supposedly/ did was release incriminating evidence about Hilary, for goodness sakes. *IF* it was them at all, but because it was "hacks" the election was "stolen" - not that people were swayed by more realistic information about Hilary, no no no.

The Guardian articles are verging on utter clickbait at this point
ARE YOU WHITE?
DO YOU HAVE A PENIS?
YOU'RE THE PROBLEM, Kill yourself now, to save the world problems......

Yeah, no.

Re:Oh here we go again, let me point this out

[drinkypoo]

You can rant and ramble, but you can't make a coherent point. It's almost like you're deliberately trying to derail the conversation with babbling bullshit.

Re:Oh here we go again, let me point this out

[AbRASiON]

Please elaborate how I didn't make a valid point, I thought my point was quite clear in the post.

Re:Oh here we go again, let me point this out

[AbRASiON]

I see little value in reading the guardian article whatsoever, they have printed biased article upon article with a heavy left slant and blinders on for several years now.

I was happy to believe in crazy right wing media 5 years ago, sure, no problem - but it never occurred to me that the media had a left bias until the past couple of years. Since then, I've seen some serious misrepresentation of news, over and over and over that I think questioning what you read is a damn good thing.

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[mwvdlee]

What should politicians learn? That they should lie more in order to reel in the idiots?

even if you buy the premise

[superwiz]

Even if anyone buys the premise that Russia was funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Trump (in secret) after spending millions of dollars to support Clintons (in the open), so what? Clinton is a known criminal. Why would we care if its Russia helping us to expose a criminal instead of (for example) France? If the FBI and the DOJ were so corrupt that they would not charge a candidate of the same party as the sitting president, shouldn't we be thankful if some foreign power were to reveal the depth of their corruption? Why is their doing us a favor such a problem for us? I mean, there is no question that Clinton committed multiple crimes and that she completely destroyed the good faith and credit of The United States by blatantly reneging on international agreements which US entered in good faith. Why is someone spending an amount so small (that it wouldn't buy even 1 Super Bowl ad) considered election influence if the end result was to shine the light on misdeeds of a criminal running for office?

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[mrquicky]

May I point out that the protests to which the Guardian is referring in the article, were Black Lives Matter protests? How does the Russians paying for Black Lives Matter protests help Hillary Clinton win the election?

Thanks for the spam

[Rujiel]

Maybe next time you could have some self-awareness and not spam up threads on an article that happens to be about your own profession? Just makes it more than a little obvious why you're here.

Re:Russian trollbots will be here to shout otherwi

[Zontar The Mindless]

Let both of these asses be set to grinding corn.

Re:Bulletin Board of Trump / Russia Treason

[Zontar The Mindless]

Al Franken used to be a fine comedian. Now he's a Senator, but I don't hold that against him.

Re:Thank you.

[Bartles]

I'd go with wikileaks every time.

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[houghi]

That is what you get with first past the post. They just provided the last drop to overflow the bucket.

Re:Bulletin Board of Trump / Russia Treason

[Kaenneth]

Maybe you should have voted for someone instead of reality TV star.

Russians fight for justice

[umghhh]

So when Ruskis pay for it then the fight for justice is wrong?

Re:Russians fight for justice

[stdarg]

No the so-called fight for justice is wrong either way, but this maybe makes it more clear to the people who have been villainizing Russia for their alleged Trump support. I love seeing the cognitive dissonance.

Reminds me of Alexander Dugin

[Hal_Porter]

From TFA

The main topics covered by the groups run from Russia were race relations, Texan independence and gun rights. RBC counted 16 groups relating to the Black Lives Matter campaign and other race issues that had a total of 1.2 million subscribers. The biggest group was entitled Blacktivist and reportedly had more than 350,000 likes at its peak.

From Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements â" extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."[5]

There's a certain amount of irony that Democrats are complaining about this, given the idea was to sow general discord in the US rather than to make one party win over another. Especially as, during the Cold War, the KGB did want doveish candidates to win over hawkish ones - e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Russian GRU defector Stanislav Lunev said in his autobiography that "the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad," and that during the Vietnam War the USSR gave $1 billion to American anti-war movements, more than it gave to the VietCong,[19] although he does not identify any organisation by name. Lunev described this as a "hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost".[19] The former KGB officer Sergei Tretyakov said that the Soviet Peace Committee funded and organized demonstrations in Europe against US bases.[20] According to Time magazine, a US State Department official estimated that the KGB may have spent $600 million on the peace offensive up to 1983, channeling funds through national Communist parties or the World Peace Council "to a host of new antiwar organizations that would, in many cases, reject the financial help if they knew the source."[13] Richard Felix Staar in his book Foreign Policies of the Soviet Union says that non-communist peace movements without overt ties to the USSR were "virtually controlled" by it. Lord Chalfont claimed that the Soviet Union was giving the European peace movement £100 million a year. The Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) alleged Soviet funding of CND.

U.S. plans in the late 1970s and early 1980s to deploy Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in response to the Soviet SS-20 missiles were contentious, prompting Paul Nitze, the American negotiator, to suggest a compromise plan for nuclear missiles in Europe in the celebrated "walk in the woods" with Soviet negotiator Yuli Kvitsinsky, but the Soviets never responded.[21] Kvitsinsky would later write that, despite his efforts, the Soviet side was not interested in compromise, calculating instead that peace movements in the West would force the Americans to capitulate.[22]

In November 1981, Norway expelled a suspected KGB agent who had offered bribes to Norwegians to get them to write letters to newspapers denouncing the deployment of new NATO missiles.[13]

In 1985 Time magazine noted "the suspicions of some Western scientists that the nuclear winter hypothesis was promoted by Moscow to give antinuclear groups in the U.S. and Europe some fresh ammunition against America's arms buildup."[23] Sergei Tretyakov claimed that the data behind the nuclear winter scenario was faked by the KGB and spread in the west as part of a ca

Re:With eyes we see, with blindfolds we fall.

[oh_my_080980980]

Says the troll, stirring the pot....

So...

[oh_my_080980980]

They operated like a SuperPac with far less money. Got it.

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[ganjadude]

it also pays for a LOT of signs and bus trips for "protesters"

Re:BLM isn't a group

[Curunir_wolf]

I have no idea what "Blacktivist" is.

That's what they called themselves on Facebook. There were 2 group pages, IIRC. And they had more "likes" on their pages than the verified BLM page.

Ever seen Hillary without makeup?

[mpercy]

Yeesh. You think the face she puts on every morning is "natural"? Without makeup she looks like Palpatine.

Re:Ever seen Hillary without makeup?

[Rakarra]

Why do I care what Hillary looks like? She's irrelevant. She has makeup, but no horrible tacky fake tan like Trump has, at least. We were comparing Obama and Trump's appearance, though.

Not a super pac

[junkgoof]

Money is traceable. The Russians did not use much, probably just incidentals like memberships and web site hosting. The Russians piggy backed on the propaganda networks in place to send their message. Trump did the same. Both hooked into the huge bought media circus that tells media consumers to do what the people paying for the news want them to do: buy guns, lower taxes on rich people, cut services, pay for your own medicare like rich people do and congressmen don't, subsidize big rich companies, money is speech... By comparison Trump and Russian hackers don't seem so bad...

Re:BLM isn't a group

[mpercy]

"It doesn't cause riots (because most white people assume the white youth did something stupid, like fight with the cop or try to grab his gun)"

Odd, because i you take the word white out of the sentence, I think it's still true. In fact, I think that most of the people killed by cops did the most stupid thing they could do: pointed a gun at a cop.

The headline cases are only those where a white cops shoots a black man. Never see much when a white cop shoots a white guy, or a black cops shots a black guy, or a black cop shoots a white guy. Those don't fit the "all cops are racist murderers" narrative pushed by BLM.

For example, there has been virtually no media coverage of the situation and whites have not rioted after the verdict in the Derrick Stafford trial (and his partner Norris Greenhouse). Stafford and Green are the two black cops who shot at an unarmed white man with his hands raised (the video shows) and killed his 6-year old autistic son in the process.

http://nypost.com/2017/03/25/c...

"Video from a police officer’s body camera shows the father, Christopher Few, had his hands raised inside his vehicle while the two deputies collectively fired 18 shots. At least four of those bullets tore into Jeremy, who died within minutes."

"Stafford testified Friday that he shot at the car because he feared Few was going to back up and hit the other deputy, Norris Greenhouse Jr.

“I felt I had no choice but to save Norris. That is the only reason I fired my weapon,” Stafford said.

"Jurors heard testimony that Stafford fired 14 shots from his semi-automatic pistol. Stafford said Greenhouse stumbled and fell to the ground as he tried to back away from Few’s car.

"Stafford and Greenhouse are black. Few is white, and so was his son.

"Before the shooting, Stafford and Greenhouse both had been sued over claims they had used excessive force or neglected their duties as police officers. The Marksville Police Department suspended Stafford after his indictment on rape charges in 2011, but reinstated him after prosecutors dismissed the charges.

That's not to say that there's not steroid-pumped, twitchy cops ready to shoot dogs or people at the drop of a hat, who are probably inclined to profile young black men (per FBI statistics indicating huge skew in rates at which young black men commit violent crimes) and hence are likely to be wrong somewhat more often in their dealing with young black men.

Washington Post:

Police have shot and killed a young black man (ages 18 to 29) — such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. —175 times since January 2015; 24 of them were unarmed. Over that same period, police have shot and killed 172 young white men, 18 of whom were unarmed. Once again, while in raw numbers there were similar totals of white and black victims, blacks were killed at rates disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population.

No, actually it doesn't

[rsilvergun]

But nice Straw Man you got there, be a shame if logic and reason knocked out down. Just because Russia has been using our poor race relations against is for a while doesn't mean the didn't work with team Trump to get him elected. The two events are only tangentially related. If anything Donny's the culmination of 20 years work to destabilize our country and congrats, we fell for it Hook line and sinker.

Re:No, actually it doesn't

[doctorvo]

But nice Straw Man you got there, be a shame if logic and reason knocked out down. Just because Russia has been using our poor race relations against is for a while doesn't mean the didn't work with team Trump to get him elected.

I completely agree! The fact that Putin didn't get Trump elected is indeed unrelated to the fact that American leftists have traditionally been supported by Russia. It's just that if you put those two facts together, it makes the Democratic conspiracy theories even more ludicrous than they already are.

If anything Donny's the culmination of 20 years work to destabilize our country and congrats, we fell for it Hook line and sinker.

No, Hillary, Sanders, and their followers are the culmination of 20 years work to destabilize our country; those people are utterly bonkers. Trump was simply the Hail Mary choice that Americans elected because they didn't have any other reasonable option. If Bill Clinton had run again, he would have been elected, but he would be maligned as a racist neo-Nazi by the current Democratic party.

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[syn3rg]

People seem to be missing the point. Russia didn't care who was elected, as long as the US was weakened internally.

Like the Tea Party?

[tomhath]

Here's how it works. You pay someone to participate in a protest and then have them do something that's really ugly and angers people.

Same thing happened at Tea Party rallies. Some random guy shows up with a racist sign, news media films him then asks rally organizers why they didn't toss the guy out.

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[PopeRatzo]

Same thing happened at Tea Party rallies. Some random guy shows up with a racist sign, news media films him then asks rally organizers why they didn't toss the guy out.

Except, this wasn't "some random guy". Jack Posobiec, the guy who held up the "Rape Melania" sign, was a paid Russian troll and protester who know has White House press credentials. He is one of the many direct connections between Donald Trump and Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. He's now a well-known member of the alt-right.

Read all about him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Jack Posobiec, the guy who held up the "Rape Melania" sign

There you go again. The one cite in your Wikipedia article that even tries to support the claim that Posobiec was the one holding up the sign is a BuzzFeed article that says... wait for it... "according to sources." "Sources" that are, ever so conveniently, never named.

Even more conveniently, every one of about half a dozen other articles about this I sampled had no independent corroboration and simply linked back to the BuzzFeed article.

Surely you can do better than that.

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[PopeRatzo]

There you go again. The one cite in your Wikipedia article that even tries to support the claim that Posobiec was the one holding up the sign is a BuzzFeed article that says... wait for it... "according to sources."

Probosiec admitted the sign was his.

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[PopeRatzo]

Surely you can do better than that.

Also, if you scroll up just a few comments, you will see three citations to Probosiec taking credit for the "Rape Melania" sign as well as for starting the "assassinate Trump" chant.

"Posobiec claimed he had started “assassinate Trump” chant and planted “Rape Melania” sign to smear anti-Trump protesters. BuzzFeed’s Joseph Bernstein reported in January that a “Rape Melania” sign seen at an anti-Trump rally was “the culmination of a disinformation campaign by Posobiec and others intended to paint the anti-Trump rallies as violent and out of control,” and “according to a source, it is Posobiec himself holding the ‘Rape Melania’ sign in the photographs.” Bernstein added that Posobiec “claimed that he’d started an ‘assassinate Trump’ chant to goad protesters into copying him, with the intention of filming them."

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Probosiec admitted the sign was his.

The BuzzFeed article said exactly the opposite. Feel free to cite a different source if you have one.

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Also, if you scroll up just a few comments, you will see three citations to Probosiec taking credit for the "Rape Melania" sign as well as for starting the "assassinate Trump" chant.

Nothing of the sort. Your three links are simply examples of the articles I mentioned that have no source but the original BuzzFeed article, itself effectively just saying "a little birdie told me so."

Writing something that the author wishes were true does not constitute journalism.

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[PopeRatzo]

Nothing of the sort. Your three links are simply examples of the articles I mentioned that have no source but the original BuzzFeed article, itself effectively just saying "a little birdie told me so."

Writing something that the author wishes were true does not constitute journalism.

There is literally no source that would satisfy you, is there? I've posted...let's see...six, no seven different sources and it's still not good enough. Here are some that do not reference the buzzfeed article.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/...

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Here are some that do not reference the buzzfeed article.

Did you even read those articles you linked? The second link absolutely does cite the Buzzfeed article -- and only that. The first link just cites the second link. And the third link doesn't say a word about the sign or claim that Posobeic held it up.

There is literally no source that would satisfy you, is there?

Indeed there is -- one that (a) actually states your claim; and (b) doesn't ultimately link back to a single article based on an anonymous source. That's the target, and it hasn't moved. It's not my fault you don't have a source like that.

It is your fault, however, that you're playing dumb about getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[PopeRatzo]

It's not my fault you don't have a source like that.

I would invite Slashdot readers to check out the sources I have cited in this thread and decide for themselves.

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

I would invite Slashdot readers to check out the sources I have cited in this thread and decide for themselves.

I have not a shred of doubt you would rather not have to actually quote the language from your sources you think proves your point. Going through that exercise (or trying to, anyway) would prove you to be the disingenuous troll you are.

Ironic, isn't it, that in the midst of a discussion about fraudulent information sources you choose to hang your hat on one and then bend over backwards trying to cover it up?

Re:Like the Tea Party?

[PopeRatzo]

I have not a shred of doubt you would rather not have to actually quote the language from your sources you think proves your point.

I have quoted the language from my sources. Several times.

You seem to have the same respect for the truth that Donald Trump has for the families of fallen military.

Re:Don't the US like "regime-change"?

[stdarg]

I don't think there is any actual outrage, it's so transparent that this is excuse-searching for Hillary.

Re: $80k? Our politicians could learn something

[Reverend Green]

It appears they have succeeded in that respect.

Nobody likes the hard left

[i286NiNJA]

They're actually a very small group of people. But if you had to go by the internet it would seem there are millions of them.

So helping the hard left helps republicans. But they don't only help the hard left they also help the hard right. The country can't survive if they're engaging in politics that's only important to some fringe elements. Especially since the fringe right and left are often full of corrupt authoritarian bullies, the more of them that get squeezed into relevant politics the less stable the country will become.

0.002%

[PortHaven]

The 0.002% of lobbyists.

Okay, so $80,000 versus $3.15 billion dollars in lobbying money. Oh, that is just the official amount expended lobbying Congress. We're not even addressing the billions expended lobbying the American public on a multitude of issues.

Contemplate that...

Oh, and $80,000 expended on divisive issues. Is it possible that maybe Russians who do business in the U.S. have feelings on issues? Maybe a Russian is pro-2nd Amendment. Who knows.

But this is such a miniscule drop in the bucket it is laughable.

What you don't understand....

[PortHaven]

Is that it is NOT the gun manufacturers driving the NRA. The number one gripe heard from gun owners regarding the NRA leadership, is that they compromise too much. Dead serious.

Re:Bulletin Board of Trump / Russia Treason

[HornWumpus]

And Bill Maher used to be funny, once in a great while.

I'm shocked there's election meddling

[k6mfw]

going on around here. I was thinking this has been happening all the time. US has assisted various parties for various elections in other countries whether it be supporting banana republics or publishing supportive articles and broadcasts for Soviet bloc opposition like Lech Walesa.

Kind of sucks when other countries do the same to us.

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[Ian A. Shill]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Welcome to Slashdot.

Now get out!

It's almost as if centuries of institutionalized

[rsilvergun]

racism resulting higher poverty rates in makes people prone to crime and violence. Blacks are 2-3x more likely to be poor in most states. Anyway I'll just leave this here.

Because Trump choose his skin color

[rsilvergun]

seriously. It really is that simple. Trump has a bad tan. The fact that a man with his considerable wealth wears a bad tan is just another example of him being dumb. It's a reflection of his character. If he was born with that tan or had some sort of medical condition we'd shut up about it. I know he wasn't born with it and I haven't heard him say he's covering up a skin condition. He's just really not very bright.

If you want sanity in politics we need to get the Russians out of it. Then we need to get the billionaires and ruling class out of it. The best way to do that is fund education. e.g. pay for everyone to go to college. It's worth it even if they come out with a crap liberal arts degree since at least they had to spend 4 years thinking about something besides beer and the 'Merican flag.

Re:It's almost as if centuries of institutionalize

[N3wsByt3]

This might or might not be true, however it changes nothing as to the fact blacks ARE committing more crimes. And thus, get more arrested or thrown in jail. Hence, why blacks being more arrested or in jail than whites *does not* indicate racism on itself.

And why is this relevant?

[whyyisthissohard]

Is this the arrow with the "election hacking" target drawn around it?

Putin hacked my brain and forced me to vote for Trump!

The question of the "election hacking" is totally irrelevant.
Why does it make sense to blame misinformation when misinformation is inert without weak minds to pick it up and make it play? If one was interested in solving the problem one would address education and culture in a positive way.
What interest of yours would the alternative candidate serve that this one does not?
Do you really believe your interests are represented in the government at all?
Have you honestly taken stock of the problems in your life and objectively determined the possible causes?
Which of these trace back to the matter of who the president is?

The problem of you losing your identity in a hedonistic consumer culture? You don't feel like the present figurehead is the most accurate avatar for your personality?
The president who would make you feel the warmest won't fill your soul back in.

Stop looking to external sources for solutions. Stop looking to external targets for blame. Deal with yourself and yours. Stop trying to feel important by discussing what everyone else is discussing. That is the source of your loss of identity which you seek. Not the "wrong president".

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That there are *cheaper ways to get the job done*.

Re: BLM isn't a group

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And of course, redneck racist cops being ambushed and lynched.

Re:$80k? Our politicians could learn something

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I think you've got the wrong lesson. Trump's campaign cost $94 million. The Russian campaign spent $80,000

Russian meddling reset

[geowash01]

Russian meddling? Who can believe that's a thing after Clinton's reset and Obama's increased flexibility? Well, except for anyone who was alive during the Cold War? (Which isn't most of the people on this site.) Hey, Obama? Your mama called and wants you to tell the 80s to give Romney an apology.

Furries need not apply

[i286NiNJA]

You're a furry that's where you stand you'll forever be the undermench and underclass you can alt right all you want but you're just propping up a bunch of folks who will be shoving your ass in the ovens just as soon as they handle some more pressing business.

Re:Furries need not apply

[SharpFang]

Ooooh, so I'm the undermench and underclass because I'm a furry / neckbeard / basement dweller... or whatever other slur you choose. Yet I'm considered over-privileged due to being a white male.

What you're doing is the exact same separation into the 'oppressed superior race' vs 'oppressing untermenchen' as it was in times of Hitler. Except currently the new Ubermenschen are Women, Blacks, LGBT and Muslim.

Re:Furries need not apply

[i286NiNJA]

See you're adding things in here that I never said.
Since you posted a base64 encoded drawing of a horse penis to your slashdot journal I wholeheartedly believe that you face worse discrimination than your average black guy.

I'm just saying that Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon would stuff you in an oven as soon as there were a few extra BTUs to spare.

Re:Furries need not apply

[i286NiNJA]

Actually you said you're a zoophile so they'd probably reach across the aisle and unite with ISIS to pitch you off a roof together.

Re:Furries need not apply

[SharpFang]

And don't you find it suspicious, that a zoophile would find these peple to be the lesser evil to what the liberal, "diverse and tolerant" left represents? Thing is, your tolerance only reaches skin deep. What lies beneath, under a thick veil of hipocrisy is bigotry of the same caliber as shouted out by neo-nazis.

These on the right just show willful ignorance. They pretend to care about the "christian values", but if you don't shove your stuff in their face, they'll just pretend they didn't see it and you'll be able to keep living your life as you see fit, just don't make a fuss. It's not optimal, but it's preferable to witch hunts organized by the left currently. Trying to regulate everything, restrictions on clothes, on speech, on access to work, and left free to do as they will they are bound to seek out new things to feel outraged about - and then fight and destroy them until everyone adheres to their code.

Look: I don't like Trump. I don't trust his decisions. I don't really understand him or the game he's playing. But from the glimpses both into the deep end of the SJW communities, and into the business end of DNC activities, I do consider him the lesser evil.

Re:Furries need not apply

[i286NiNJA]

90% of the left aren't SJWs any more than most people on the right are nazis. The russian game is convincing the american people otherwise. Given that you've been arguing about it for a week and still haven't come to this conclusion. I think the horse penis on your slashdot journal pretty much sums up how much anyone should trust your judgement.
Compared to you I'm a geopolitical expert so the fact you'd jerk off a dog and still support someone who would kill you for it doesn't change my mind about anything.